s are so unnatural as to
take to mathematics, Wolf had a grand undeveloped genius beyond all
belief for collecting advertisements. He had tried many pursuits and
failed, but the first week he went into this business he brought in $200
(40 pounds), which gave him forty dollars, and he never afterwards fell
below it, but often rose above. "Advers." for him meant not adversity.
It was very characteristic of Colonel Forney, who was too much absorbed
in politics to attend much to business, that long after the _Weekly
Press_ was yielding him $10,000 a year _clear profit_, he said to me one
day, "Mr. Leland, you must not be discouraged as to the weekly; the
clerks tell me in the office that it _meets its expenses_!"

There was abundance of life and incident on the newspaper in those days,
especially during election times in the autumn. I have known fights,
night after night, to be going on in the street below, at the corner of
Seventh and Chestnut, between Republicans and Democrats, with revolver
shots and flashes at the rate of fifty to a second, when I was literally
so occupied with pressing telegrams that I could not look out to see the
fun. One night, however, when there were death-shots falling thick and
fast, I saw a young man make a most _incredible_ leap. He had received a
bullet under the shoulder, and when a man or a deer is hit there he
always leaps. I heard afterwards that he recovered, though this is a
vital place.

It happened once that for a week the Republicans were kept from resisting
or retaliating by their leaders, until the Democrats began to disgrace
themselves by excesses. Then all at once the Republicans boiled over,
thrashed their foes, and attacking the Copperhead clubs, threw their
furniture out of the window, and--inadvertently perhaps--also a few
Copperheads. Just before they let their angry passions rise in this
fashion there came one night a delegation to serenade Colonel Forney at
the office. The Colonel was grand on such occasions. He was a fine,
tall, portly man, with a lion-like mien and a powerful voice. He began--

"My friends, fellow-citizens and Republicans, you have this week acted
nobly."

Cries from the crowd, "_We hev_! _we hev_!"

"You, when smitten on the right cheek, turned unto the oppressor the
left."

"We did! we _did_!"

"You are beyond all question models--I may say with truth, paragons of
patience, long-suffering, and humility. You are--Christian gentlemen!