Behold John seated scratching out his first editorial! Ah, ye weavers of cheap literature, who have watched with aching curiosity the appearance of your first production--ye writers of small poetry for daily journals, who have listened so eagerly for praise--ye penny editors who have successfully tickled the popular ear--ye ruling deities of mammoth weeklies, what are all your feelings, concentrated into one great throb, in comparison to the mighty throes of talent waking from her sleep in the mind of John Earl. It would have shocked the lower town like the heaving of a volcano, had they but known the shower of expletives our hero was tracing on the sheet before him. Goths and Vandals, corruption and spoilsmen, traitors and apostates, vile incendiaries and polluting vipers, poisonous demagogues, and a host more, bitter as sin, were showered like hail from his pen, when giving “perticular goss” to the lower town editor and his abettors. With the appearance of the first number our hero's consequence began to rise, the respectable citizens took him cordially by the hand, and their daughters smiled upon him, while the poorer inhabitants wondered at his “larnin'.” “A most excellent first number,” said the lanky member, “a good quantity of hot shot--just the thing--sew the lower town up--you've got prodigious talents--immense!” John bowed to the pleasing flattery. “Well, hoss,” said the storekeeper constituent and subscriber, “You've slashed the hide off'er that fellar in the lower town, touched his raw, and rumpled his feathers--that's the way to give him jessy. I raily believe you'll git yourself inter the legislatur' afore long, ef you keep on.” Our hero listened to these first breathings of fame with a swelling bosom--there was a chance of his becoming somebody, at last, and labor became a pleasure when it produced such a yield. At a public meeting called in the town he was elected secretary, and ventured on the occasion to make a speech, which was loudly applauded, and in the next number of the Eagle appeared a glowing description of the proceedings, with a synopsis of his own speech. This awoke some jealousy in the mind of the lanky member, who thought John wished to supplant him. As time progressed the Eagle increased its subscription to two hundred, its editor grew popular, in debt, and received nothing from his subscribers--indeed, he soon discovered that pay made up no part of their patronage, and he began to grow tired of laboring for glory alone. All this time the war was waging hotter and thicker between the towns and their editors. At length he of the lower town inserted in his “Patriotic Herald and Telegraph” the following: “We are informed, from good authority, that the Buzzard of the Eagle cannot pay his board bill, and fears are entertained that he will slope without liquidating the debt!”