oman-killer. Every week he wrote lushy
"poetry" for the _Journal_, about his newest conquest. His rhymes
for my week were headed, "TO MARY IN H--L," meaning to Mary in
Hannibal, of course. But while setting up the piece I was suddenly
riven from head to heel by what I regarded as a perfect thunderbolt
of humor, and I compressed it into a snappy footnote at the
bottom--thus:

"We will let this thing pass, just this once; but we wish Mr. J.
Gordon Runnels to understand distinctly that we have a character
to sustain, and from this time forth when he wants to commune
with his friends in h--l, he must select some other medium than
the columns of this journal!"

The paper came out, and I never knew any little thing attract so
much attention as those playful trifles of mine.

For once the _Hannibal Journal_ was in demand--a novelty it had
not experienced before. The whole town was stirred. Higgins dropped
in with a double-barrelled shot-gun early in the forenoon. When he
found that it was an infant (as he called me) that had done him the
damage, he simply pulled my ears and went away; but he threw up his
situation that night and left town for good. The tailor came with
his goose and a pair of shears; but he despised me, too, and
departed for the South that night. The two lampooned citizens came
with threats of libel, and went away incensed at my insignificance.
The country editor pranced in with a warwhoop next day, suffering
for blood to drink; but he ended by forgiving me cordially and
inviting me down to the drug-store to wash away all animosity in a
friendly bumper of "Fahnestock's Vermifuge." It was his little
joke. My uncle was very angry when he got back--unreasonably so, I
thought, considering what an impetus I had given the paper, and
considering also that gratitude for his preservation ought to have
been uppermost in his mind, inasmuch as by his delay he had so
wonderfully escaped dissection, tomahawking, libel, and getting his
head shot off. But he softened when he looked at the accounts and
saw that I had actually booked the unparalleled number of
thirty-three new subscribers, and had the vegetables to show for
it--cord-wood, cabbage, beans, and unsalable turnips enough to run
the family for two years!

Journalism in Tennessee

The editor of the Memphis _Avalanche_ swoops thus mildly down upon
a correspondent who posted him as a Radical: "While he was writing
the first word, the