We were isolated from society a good deal, but we met the better class of
people now and then in the course of our business. I did not like so much
night work, and sometimes we had to eat raw pork because we did not wish
to build a fire that would attract mosquitoes and sheriffs. So we were
liable more or less to trichina and insomnia, but still we were free from
sewer gas and poll tax. We did not get our mail with much regularity, but
we got a lick at some mighty fine scenery.
But all this is only incidental. What I desired to say was this: Fame and
distinction come high, and when we have them in our grasp at last we find
that they bring their resultant sorrows. I worked long and hard for fame,
and sat up nights and rode through alkali dust for thousands of miles,
that I might be known as the leading robber of the age in which I lived,
only to find at last that my great fame was the source of my chief
annoyance. It made me so widely known that I felt, as Christine Nilsson
says, “as though I lived in a glass case.” Everyone wanted to see me.
Everyone wanted my autograph. Everyone wanted my skeleton to hang up in
the library.
I could have traveled with a show and drawn a large salary, but I hated to
wear a boiler iron overcoat all through the hot weather, after having
lived so wild and free. But all this attention worried me so that I could
not sleep, and many a night I would arise from the lava bed on which I had
reclined, and putting on my dressing-gown and slippers, I would wander
about under the stars and wish that I could be an unknown boy again in my
far away home. But I could not. I often wished that I could die a natural
death, but that was out of the question.
Finally, it got so that I did not dare to take a chew of tobacco, unless I
did so under an assumed name. I hardly dared to let go of my six-shooter
long enough to wipe my nose, for fear that someone might get the drop on
me.
That is the reason why I came to Canada. Here among so many criminals, I
do not attract attention, but I use a _nom de plume_ all the time, even
here, and all these hot nights, while others take off their clothing, I
lie and swelter in my heavy winter _nom de plume_.
The Old Subscriber.
At this season of the year, we are forcibly struck with the earnest and
honest effort that is being made by the publisher of the American
newspaper. It is a healthy sign and a hopeful one for the future of our
country. It occurs to me that with the great advancement of the newspaper,
and the family paper, and the magazine, we do not expect leaders and
statesmen to think for us so much as we did fifty years ago. We do not
allow the newspaper to mold us so much as we did. We enjoy reading the
opinion of a bright, brave, and cogent editor because we know that he sits
where he can acquire his facts in a few hours from all quarters of the
globe, and speak truly to his great audience in relation to those facts,
but we have ceased to allow even that man to think for us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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