fame! He it was who beat the Phillies—gave the Quaker bugs the willies—he it was who saved our bacon in that 'leven-inning game!" 

 Then we crowded round the pitcher, making that great man the richer by a ton of adulation, in a red-hot fervor flung; and the poet, in a pickle, mused upon the false and fickle plaudits of the heartless rabble, till the dinner gong was rung! 

 

 

 THE VIRTUOUS EDITOR 

 I use my Trenchant, fertile pen to help along the cause of men and make the sad world brighter, to give all good ambitions wings, to help the poor to better things and make their burdens lighter. The page whereon my screeds appear envoys a sacred atmosphere; it's helpful and uplifting; it hands out morals by the ton, and shows the people how to shun the rocks to which they're drifting. 

 You say my other pages reek with filthy "cures for cancer"? Impertinently, sir, you speak, and I refuse to answer. 

 All causes good and true and pure, and everything that should endure I'm always found supporting; and in my lighter moments I to heights of inspiration fly, the soft-eyed muses courting. To those who wander far astray I, like a shepherd, point the way to paths and fields Elysian; no sordid motives soil my pen as I assist my fellow men, no meanness mars my vision. 

 You say I print too many ads, unfit for youths' perusal, of fakers' pills and liver pads? I gave you one refusal to argue that, so quit your fuss and cease your foolish chatter; it is beneath me to discuss a purely business matter. 

 I point out all the shabby tricks which now disgrace our politics, those tricks which shame the devil; I ask the voters to deface corruption and our country place upon a higher level. Through endless wastes of words I roam to make the Fireside and the Home the nation's shrine and glory; and Purity must ring again in every offspring of my pen, in every screed and story. 

 You say my paper isn't fit for aught but toughs and muckers? That all the fakers come to it when they would fleece the suckers? Your criticism takes the buns! It's surely most surprising! You'll have to see the man who runs the foreign advertising. 

 

 

 Prev. P 45/60 next