Mineral Point tribune. (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1869-1938, 1875-06-17
A Nevada Editors Keepsakes.


Sitting here in our sanctum and think
ing,. our eye musingly falls upon and the
hand toys with little trinket, keep
sake, as the world goes, a vade neccm. 1t
is of no particular value as values are
reckoned, but it is useful to the hand
| and treasure TO the heart. A thousand
times taken up, thousand times used, a
| thousand times found in readiness, it has
| come to be like a fond friend waiting to
anticipate want and ready to supply it..
| And yet it is but trinket senseless
| thing; merely the old dragoon revolver
we wrenched from Buffalo Bill when he
came charging in here to obliterate us
| for writing police item about him.
| We buried him in our little graveyard,
back of the office; but we can never gaze
upon that little pistol without a feeling
Of admiration for his misplaced and I'M
fortunate temerity.
That classcally- nodded limb, picked
and dried, hanging on the wall, is the
left shank of SiX-toed Pete, the great
Mud Springs desperate, who came to re-
monstrate with us for publishing his
marriage under the head of deaths"
1t was a printers bunder, not ours,
Dul no matter, we riddled him with
that revolver and then took off
his leg at the hip joint with the
first slash OF our trusty little
Ratchet; we should have completed his
ACKNOWLEDGMENT had he not run away,
coward that he was. His two big broth
ers who came for that leg and revenge
both rest in our little graveyard, back of
the office; peace to their ashes.
The Jagged and knotty old Feejee war.
club in the corner, this dilapdated nose
and broken jaw, as well as this bullet
which we still feel evermore singing
away in the interior of our right lung,
were left us by old Blifkins, the editor of
the Gospel Bugte, who came on from the
East to kill US for connecting his name
with the Beecher scandal, and proving
that he was the father of Bessie Turner
as well as the bosom friend Of Susan b.
Anthony. Our trusty pistol and little
Ratchet did not fail us, and he too lies,
edltorially, in our quiet little graveyard
back OF the office.
That elongated, scoop-shaped memento
which we use for a wastebasket was
once the ear of Virginia City newspa-
per reporter. He would persist in steal
ing our items, so we were obliged to go
and cut of his ear with our little Ratchet
faiiaciously thinking that would stop
him. His head goes next
We cannot gaze upon that ere waste
basket without a sentimental degree of
reflection stealing Glagonally across our
senslbilities. Overlooking as it now is
with rejected manuscripts in eXasperat-
ing prose, abortivc poetry, obituary
rhymes and soul narrowing literary trash
generally, was it not always crammed
full of still worse trash in the way of
o-account items, dog-tights, swill-cart
accidents and all sorts of sensational lies,
gauzy humbugs and cock-and-bull sto-
ries? All! how eagerly that capacious,
gullible ear drank them in. May it not
IN some unknown and mysterious way
have become so saturated with those
items that perhaps some may yet cling to
ii as the perfume of flowers around a
vase which held them? 1t is a thing Of
more use than beauty, but it is like our
other keepsakes, Overlooking with subtle
cmanations and personal reminders. All
this may be sentimental fancy, but it is
fancy without Il fault; il may be non
sense, but it is q nonsense which will
make the world better if acted upon,
for thoughts may be thus kept from
wandering and hearts from straying till
the feet learn TO tread the upper paths
Of life aud hove The better way!-G0ld
UiX (Ntpddd) Ne,rs