The Princeton union., 1893-03-16
SERVING TWO MASTERS.

ssSSGclA1y I1Sidlu S1l S.titlDttSHs S1laS -
more than ! .,an say. No one invited
me to come, welcomed me when ar
rived, " expressed a wish to have me
stay
The place had no newspaper, it is
true, but it seemed to need one. Most
of the population were silver-miners,
who We're so much under ground as to
be little interested in affairs on the SUI
face. Again, q large part OF the lnhaD-
atants could not read; another large
part did not want to, and Il majority
OF the remainder objected to paying
FOR the privilege
Subscribers being SO few. you may
Imagine that advertisers were not very,
plenty Those l secured insisted on
paying wholly in goods that We're
never of use to me.
One advertiser was s;lloOnkeeper-I
never drank Another was a tobacco
nist-I did not smoke. A third was Il
harnessmaker-I had no horse. A
fourth dealt in gunpowder, rend-rock,
dynamite and other eXplosives-While
i never blew up anything or anybody
in my life excepting tiguraively.
Nevertheless / managed to live, or at
all events I did not die. At the end of
the first year l had four hundred and
"sixty-eight subscribers, two hundred
and ten of whom remained such be-
cause never attempted to collect their
bills. A few paid-for Eastern adver-
'tisements and some job printing en-
abled me to keep my head above water
as general thing. For the rest of the
time I had to hold my breath.
At last I reached such prosperity-that
after paying off my one journeyman
on Saturday night, I occasionally found
a dollar Or two left for myself.
Just at this time an opposition paper
was set up.
"The Calabash City Spy, George
Rowe, editor and proprietor" appear
ed in all the glory of secondhand type
--mine was third-hand-and 4 grade Of
paper somewhat resembling real
''newsT-nine did not resemble it at
ali. The Spy had brand-new vignette
head, representing the town as seen
from G-ingO mountain. This utterly
.eclipseG my WOrn-out woodcut of the
Goddess of Liberty sitting on large
cog-wheel. surrounded by plows, an
chors and steam engines. She held a
book in one hand, and in the other a
wheat-sheaf which looked so much like
"A birch rod that it gave her the air Of
;an old-fashioned school ma'am holding
"a session in a machine shop. -.. ~
Since every person who owed me a
ygrndge Or arrears OF subscription i'm
'mediately went over to Rowe, he soon
had a pretty large list. In some myS-
terious way he detached several Of my
advertisers from their insecure allie
glance, besides obtaining several new
.ones among people from whom I had
been unable to get anything.
Rowe was a good-looking, bright,
active, well educated young fellow,
with whom I should certainly have
been friendly under different circum-
stances; but this was now quite i'm
possible. Aside from business rivalry,
ut is a part of the business of country
editors to be irreconcilabIe foes i'll Or
der to satisfy the publc's demand for
excitement. s
As subjects Of interest are few in q
i hamlet like Calabash City, the weekly
contest between the newspapers was
eagerly anticipated by the citizens, and
"A peaceful settlement of any dispute
would have been regarded a derelictiOn
of duty So we two poor editors con-
tinued, week after week. to act the
gladiator for a far from Roman popu-
lace, and soon sincerely hated each
other IT,, ..'l
How we did quarrel! We quarrcled
about pOlitics-thOugh we belonged to
the same party-about law, religion
and medicine, about the amOunt%Of sill
-ver to the ton in the last cleanup at
Muchacho mine, about the distance OF
the earth from the sun, and the dis
rtance of Juan Moreno's ranch from the
town plaza-;,bout all things terres-
trial subterranean and superterrene.
BY practice we grew so expert that
a really believe we could have carried
on lively discussion about the four
rules of arithmetic.
Rowe had the better of it at times
because he was sharper and wittiel
than /. Besides, he had shrewdly ar
ranged to bring out his paper the day
after mine. Thus he could reply to my
attacks at once, while / could not come
back at him for a whole week.
prided myself on a lofty, reprovine
tone, befitting the character of a long
established journal dealing with an i'm
pertinent interloper. ~
The situation was so absurd. the hos
tifity between us SO puerile and silly
that l cannot now conceive how
could have taken the thing seriously
3 Yet became Rowe's enemy as cordi
ally as if there had been some gooC
cause for detesting him. g,-'Z4.-r
When this war had gone on for sew
.eral months, I detected falling off il
the vigor Of the Spy. It was as trucu
uent as ever, but written with certain
Iangour, which seemed to show tha
Rowe was losing courage. This, O,
course, inspired me to renewed efforts
and began to hope that / should drive
the foe Off the field.
One publication day I sat down earl!
to do up the customary batch of ''scat
>tering exposures" and ''unanswerabl,
arraignments" of the Spy, when But
Haskins, my editorial assistant, com
positor, job printer mailing clerk an.
"man-of-all-work, came in, beaming wit
Joy.
"Got some good news for you, MI
Warren" said he, grinning. Cordin
to the way it looks now, there won
be no Spy this week-p'r'aps not mex
week-p'r'aps never"
-. inquired, muc
pleased. .M
-tRowe's sick abed--fever or sunthin
He can't dc, a stroke of work, n tha