But apart from any personal contact with the men who make the newspapers of the wild and woolly West it was once my experience to receive and peruse weekly many hundreds of their productions--"exchanges" they are called--and ranging from the _Mother Lode Magnet_ of California and the _Tombstone Epitaph_ of Tombstone, Arizona, to the _Arkansas Howler_ and the _Mustang_ (Colorado) _Mail_. Many a pleasant evening have I spent over them, and I still prize a scrap-book containing things to me as funny as I could find in any collection of wit and humour in the world. There is reason for this, because the backwoods and prairie Press of America is the nursery of American humour. It produced Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Petroleum V. Nasby, Joshua Billings, J. M. Bailey, Bob Burdette, Bill Nye, John Phoenix, and F. L. Stanton, to mention only a few of the humorists of international renown. I was well acquainted with Stanton at the time he was editing, printing, and publishing the famous _Smithville News_. _Texas Siftings_, the _Arizona Kicker_, and the _Burlington Hawkeye_ have made the peculiarities and amenities of Western journalism familiar to English readers. Albeit, scattered through a dozen States and territories are thousands of small newspapers, eking out a precarious existence--full of native humour and sentiment--of which not even the resident of Chicago and St. Louis has so much as heard. How precarious that existence is may be judged from the following editorial appeal in the _Gem_, of Flagstaff, Arizona:-- Have you paid your subscription yet? Remember even an editor must live. If the _hard times_ have struck your shebang, don't forget turnips, potatoes, and corn in the shock are most as welcome as hard cash at the _Gem_ office. Also hard wood. Our latch-string is always out, or same (_i.e._, the turnips, etc.) can be delivered to our wife, who will give receipt in our absence. One of the pleasing fictions preserved by the Western Press is, as we have seen, that of a plurality of editors. To these supposititious editors the most extraordinary titles and functions are bequeathed. On the front page of the _Rising Star_ (Texas) _X-ray_ no pretence of a numerous staff is made--Mr. Albert Tyson boldly announces himself as "horse, snake, lying, and fighting editor," while his motto is, "Do unto others as you would have them do to you, and do it _fust_!" In mining districts or in the new territories, where a "tenderfoot" is made welcome in the "'eave 'arf-brick" fashion, the career of an editor is one of constant risk and turmoil. If he is young and inexperienced there are always lawless spirits ready to take a rise out of him, just for the pleasure and excitement of the thing. [Illustration: The Rising Star X-Ray ALBERT TYSON, HORSE, SNAKE, LYING, AND FIGHTING EDITOR,