There were two daily and three weekly papers published in Laramie City av
that time. There were between two and three thousand people and our local
circulation ran from 150 to 250, counting dead-heads. In our prospectus we
stated that we would spare no expense whatever in ransacking the universe
for fresh news, but there were times when it was all we could do to get
our paper out on time. Out of the express office, I mean.
One of the rival editors used to write his editorials for the paper in the
evening, jerk the Washington hand-press to work them off, go home and
wrestle with juvenile colic in his family until daylight and then deliver
his papers on the street. It is not surprising that the great mental
strain incident to this life made an old man of him, and gave a tinge of
extreme sadness to the funny column of his paper.
In an unguarded moment, this man wrote an editorial once that got all his
subscribers mad at him, and the same afternoon he came around and wanted
to sell his paper to us for $10,000. I told him that the whole outfit
wasn't worth ten thousand cents.
“I know that,” said he, “but it is not the material that I am talking
about. It is the good will of the paper.”
We had a rising young horsethief in Wyoming in those days, who got into
jail by some freak of justice, and it was so odd for a horsethief to get
into jail that I alluded to it editorially. This horsethief had
distinguished himself from the common, vulgar horsethieves of his time, by
wearing a large mouth--a kind of full-dress, eight-day mouth. He rarely
smiled, but when he did, he had to hold the top of his head on with both
hands. I remember that I spoke of this in the paper, forgetting that he
might criticise me when he got out of jail. When he did get out again, he
stated that he would shoot me on sight, but friends advised me not to have
his blood on my hands, and I took their advice, so I haven't got a
particle of his blood on either of my hands.
For two or three months I didn't know but he would drop into the office
any minute and criticise me, but one day a friend told me that he had been
hung in Montana. Then I began to mingle in society again, and didn't have
to get in my coal with a double barrel shot gun any more.
After that I was always conservative in relation to horsethieves until we
got the report of the vigilance committee.
Wrestling with the Mazy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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