he would do for the man who should discover the
daring individual who had thus bearded him in his very den;
simultaneously he wrote to _The Blunder and Bluster_, demanding the name
of the offender. With most American editors such a demand (especially if
followed up with a good dinner or skilfully-applied tip to the reporter
or correspondent) would have been perfectly successful. But he of _The
Blunder and Bluster_ was a much higher style of man. As Benson once said
of him, he had, in his capacity of the first political journalist in the
country, associated so much with gentlemen, that he had learned to be
something of a gentleman himself. Accordingly he replied to Mr.
Grabster, in a note more curt than courteous, that it was impossible to
comply with his request. So the indignant host was obliged to content
himself for the time with ordering _The Sewer_ to abuse the incognito.
Before many days, however, he obtained the desired information through
another source, in this wise.

Oldport had its newspaper, of course. Every American village of more
than ten houses has its newspaper. Mr. Cranberry Fuster, who presided
over the destinies of _The Oldport Daily Twaddler_, added to this
honorable and amiable occupation the equally honorable and amiable one
of village attorney. Though his paper was in every sense a small one,
he felt and talked as big as if it had been _The Times_, or _The
Moniteur_, or _The Blunder and Bluster_. He held the President of the
United States as something almost beneath his notice, and was in the
habit of lecturing the Czar of Russia, the Emperor of Austria, and other
foreign powers, in true Little Pedlington style. Emboldened by the
impunity which attended these assaults, he undertook to try his hand on
matters nearer home, and boldly essayed one season to write down the
polka and redowa as indecent and immoral. But here he found, as
Alexander, Napoleon, and other great men, had done before him, that
there is a limit to all human power. He might better have tried to write
off the roof of the Bath Hotel, which was rather a fragile piece of
work, and might have been carried away by much less wind than usually
served to distend the columns of _The Twaddler_. The doughty Tom Edwards
snapped his heels, so to speak, in the face of the mighty editor, and
the exclusives continued to polk more frantically than ever in the teeth
of his direst fulminations. One practical effect, however, these home
diatribes h