Also, let me add that any time the editor of a local paper lets the politicians handle him, he is going to be woefully out of luck. Politics was dirty then. If an editor was a Republican, he was expected to engage in mud-slinging, shying the muck at all and sundry Democrats, regardless of their standing as citizens. The mere favorable mention of Republican candidates was not enough. And if he were true blue, he must keep up a barrage against editors of Democratic papers, and vice versa, a sort of nonsensical exchange of blasts. I steadfastly refused to be drawn into their political scraps. They called me a “mugwump.” But Gov. E. N. Morrell said—put it in writing—that inasmuch as I had succeeded in keeping my political skirts clean that I was a high-minded Republican. My hardest task was to hold down a brilliant and goshawful sarcastic local politician who wanted to engage in muck-raking, over the assumed name “Samantha” in my paper. Politics was something to be shunned by me—that is, from a business standpoint in connection with the publication of the newspaper. I once went over to Edgerton, in the Missouri hills beyond Rushville, to investigate an offer of $1,000 bonus for the establishment of a newspaper. I struck the town at a time when a teachers’ convention was being held there. The banker, who was on the committee welcoming the teachers, was also on the committee pulling for the paper, and he had arranged the appointment with me. Mistaking me for a professor, he gave me a hearty handshake, and welcomed me along with the teachers getting off the same train. When I got up town, I called at his bank—and was “welcomed” again. “What’s your politics?” he asked. “Republican,” said I. “Your train leaves in one hour,” said he. I did not know Missourians as well then as I do now. The banker laughingly said, “Stick around awhile—I will talk the matter over with you when I get a moment’s time.” He told me that there were only two Republicans in the township; that I could run the paper as an Independent until election time, and then I would be expected to be a good Democrat—a real old “Missouri Mossback” and no foolin’, I think the order would have been. I judged they did not want a newspaper. They wanted a political “organ.” On invitation of the banker, I attended a meeting in the school house, which was set in a natural oak grove — and met many sociable and interesting people. In the gathering, there were a lot of pretty girls—and all in all, it looked to me as if it would be a swell place for a young fellow to settle down. But—while I wouldn’t know why I was a Republican, I couldn’t pretend to be something that I was not.