that did it. I'll get him. Now, here is the way this stuff ought to be
written."

I took the manuscript. It was scarred with erasures and interlineations
till its mother wouldn't have known it if it had had one. It now read as
follows:

SPIRIT OF THE TENNESSEE PRESS

The inveterate liars of the Semi-Weekly Earthquake are evidently
endeavoring to palm off upon a noble and chivalrous people another
of their vile and brutal falsehoods with regard to that most
glorious conception of the nineteenth century, the Ballyhack
railroad. The idea that Buzzardville was to be left off at one side
originated in their own fulsome brains--or rather in the settlings
which they regard as brains. They had better, swallow this lie if
they want to save their abandoned reptile carcasses the cowhiding
they so richly deserve.

That ass, Blossom, of the Higginsville Thunderbolt and Battle Cry of
Freedom, is down here again sponging at the Van Buren.

We observe that the besotted blackguard of the Mud Springs Morning
Howl is giving out, with his usual propensity for lying, that Van
Werter is not elected. The heaven-born mission of journalism is to
disseminate truth; to eradicate error; to educate, refine, and
elevate the tone of public morals and manners, and make all men more
gentle, more virtuous, more charitable, and in all ways better, and
holier, and happier; and yet this blackhearted scoundrel degrades
his great office persistently to the dissemination of falsehood,