The editor of the Solid Muldoon, a weekly journal published at Ouray, Colorado, thus vaunted his own paper: “It is the most powerful antidote for meanness and kindred diseases, ever offered to a suffering community. Elder Ripley, who hasn’t told the truth in thirty-two years, feels better, and he has only been on our list two months. Captain Stanley, who hasn’t tasted water for thirteen years, can now look at a brooklet without serious results. Ed Snydom, who has been troubled with his spine ever since the Ute outbreak, put out a large washing Monday. Jim Vance, who came to this country with an Arkansas record, now moves in the first society. O, it is a perfect balsam; two-fifty per annum. One annum contains fifty-two doses.”
An editor in Texas gives the following figures from a statistical memorandum of his life:
| Been asked to drink | 11,362 times |
| Drank | 11,362 times |
| Requested to retract | 416 times |
| Didn’t retract | 416 times |
| Been invited to parties and receptions by parties fishing for puffs | 3,333 times |
| Took the hint | 33 times |
| Didn’t take the hint | 3,300 times |
| Threatened to be whipped | 170 times |
| Been whipped | 0 times |
| Whipped the other fellow | 4 times |
| Didn’t come to time | 166 times |
| Been promised whiskey, gin etc., if we would go after them | 5,610 times |
| Been after them | 5,610 times |
| Been asked what’s the news | 300,000 times |
| Told | 23 times |
| Didn’t know | 200,000 times |
| Lied about it | 99,977 times |
| Been to church | 2 times |
| Changed politics | 32 times |
| Expect to change still | 50 times |
| Gave to charity | $5.00 |
| Gave for terrier dog | $25.00 |
| Cash on hand | $1.00 |
The following cheerful valedictory of an editor was printed in the Asheville, North Carolina, Journal: “In this issue of the paper I offer my house and lot for sale. My object is to quit the country—possibly for the country’s good. For the past nine years I have endeavored to make a livelihood here at the newspaper business, and at this writing I am a good breathing representation of the Genius of Famine, or an allegory of Ireland during the potato rot. The day star of my prosperity has gone down behind a dark cloud of unpaid and uncancelled obligations. As a dernier resort, I propose to cast my lot among the Mongolians of the Pacific coast, and with this view my leisure moments are devoted to deciphering the hieroglyphics on a Chinese tea-chest, while I patiently await the advent of a purchaser.”
The following criticism of the acting of Mary Anderson was written by a Milwaukee, Wisconsin, journalist: “Mary is about six feet in height when in repose, but when her frame is charged with emotion, and she gets mad, or excited, she seems to rise right up out of the stage and telescope until she is eighteen or nineteen feet high, and others look like dwarfs. At times she puts on a sweet, lovely look, and you would have to be held by two persons to keep you from mounting the stage, and telling her that you loved her like a steam engine; and then she would put on a dying look, and a wild, scared, desperate expression, so you want to rush out after a doctor. She has lungs like a blacksmith’s bellows; when she contracts them, she looks so thin that her back bone can be traced with the naked eye; but when she inflates them, her dress fits her like paper on the wall.”