He then paused in a low tone of voice, gulped, and proceeded:
“Folks told me when I began that I ought to attack almost everything. Make
the paper non-partisan, but aggressive, that was their idea. Sail into
everything, and the paper would soon be a power in the land. So I
aggressed.
“Friends came in very kindly and told me what to attack. They would
neglect their own business in order to tell me of corruption in somebody
else. I went on that way for some time in a defiant mood, attacking
anything that happened to suggest itself.
“Finally I thought I would attack the silver dollar. I did so. I thought
that friends would come to me and praise me for my manly words, and that I
could afford to lose the friendship of the dollar provided I could win
friends.
“In six months I took an unexpired annual pass over our Larrabie Slough
Narrow-Gauge, or Orphan Road, and with nothing else but the clothes I
wore, I told the plaintiff how to jerk the old Washington press and went
away. The dear old Washington press that had more than once squatted my
burning words into the pure white page. The dear old towel on which I had
wiped my soiled hands for years, until it had almost become a part of
myself, the dark blue Gordon press with its large fly wheel and
intermittent chattel mortgage, a press, to which I had contributed the
first joint of my front finger; the editor's chair; the samples of large
business cards printed in green with an inflamed red border, which showed
that we could do colored work at Larrabie's Slough just as well as they
could in the large cities; the files of our paper; the large wilted potato
that Mr. Alonzo G. Pinkham of Erin Corners kindly laid on our table-all,
all had to go.
“I fled out into the great, hollow, mocking world of people who had
requested me to aggress. They were people who had called my attention to
various things which I ought to attack. I had attacked those things. I had
also attacked the Larrabie Slough Narrow-Gauge Railroad, but the manager
did not see the attack, and so my pass was good.
“What could I do?
“I had attacked everything, and more especially the silver dollar, and now
I was homeless. For fourteen weeks I rode up the narrow-gauge road one day
and back the next, subsisting solely on the sample of nice pecan meat that
the newsboy puts in each passenger's lap.
“You look incredulous, I see, but it is true.
“I feel differently toward the currency now, and I wish I could undo what
I have done. Were I called up again to jerk the Archimedean lever, I would
not be so aggressive, especially as regards the currency. Whether it is
inflated or not, silver dollars, paper certificates of deposit or silver
bullion, it does not matter to me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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