Bismarck daily tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1881-1916, 1902-04-28
PRAIRIE FREEZES
THE, TALE OF THE DREADFUL
FATE OF, THE MAN WHO
LICKED THE EDITOR -

Once on a time in a far off cline, dwelt
a very foolish man, who went and
licked the editor-O, insane. sense
less plan!
For some brief hint that was put in
print-he caught him unawares,
and mopped the floor and walls
with him and threw him down the
stairs.
Then forth he ran. this senseless man,
to the busy village street, and but
tonholed each man he met his ven
geance to repeat
In language grim, how he swatted
him, the editor who lay on the
sanctum floor, all stepped in gore.
where. his life blood ebbed away,
But while he flung his babbling tongue
to the murmuring winds away,
men old in wisdom shook their
heads and said: "It doesn't pay"
Though the man was licked and
bruised and kicked who gathered
up the news, he managed to print
the sheet on time, with many an
aching b"uise.
In language calm and clean, yet warm,
he told his readers round, of t n
rum-soaked. red-nosed ruffian who
had foully struck him down."
He told them how with the lowering
brow of the midnight murderer,
the stealthy tread of the pick
pocket, the ~cowardly, brutal cur.
With bludgeon grim had stricken him,
like a traitor from behind, and
left him lie on the floor to die"
and other things in kind.
Till his readers came to read the same
with dim and moistened eye, and
met the villain on the street and
coldly passed him by.
The week rolled round and the paper
found that 1.-The drink-besotted jay
who struck the editor last week
has licked his wife today"
"Inhuman BRUTE" "depraved galoot,'
'~'besotted, beastly cur" Eve I'M
derstand this frequently is what
occurs to her."
Said the editor: I'VE pity her, who
suffers from his blows, for we hear
he was once confined in Jail for
breaking his mothers nose"
The man denied, said the paper lied,
but so fast had the story run. (for
the paper talked to a thousand
souls where he only talked to one)
That the friends who read they cut
him dead, and left him in despair,
as he madly raved and danced and
swore and cried and tore his hair.
So week on week would the paper
speak of the "sin-envenomed
shark, whose aim in life is to beat
his wife and keep his misdeeds
dark
How this paper hears that the villain
fears the glittering light of truth
that the calcium of honesty would
shed On his misspent YOUTH"
And "the soldering drool of this hui
man ghoul who at midnight
graves would haunt and steal the
CHASTITY cerements from the colo
corpse of Want"
And eve heard today the noisy bray
of that same old jackass mule
whose brains, like wheels, are il
his heels-the same dull, sense
less fool" l-
Then he raved and tore his hair ant
swore and CRASHED his teeth lik
mad, and the preacher SHE'D as h
passed him by and said-"to'
bad!" tstoo bad!"
Insane and dumb in an asylum with
wild light in his eye, sits the MAJ
who licked the editor, and the PEG
pie pass him by, " ..a -. =
Wild, wild is he and dreadfully h
writhes and tears his hair, an
reads the papers as they come wit
a grim, unearthly stare,
2 And some pass by, and some ask VIII.
but the man to all is dumb, bu
once a week they hear him spea
and ask: "Have the papers come?
; Then he reads them all and the he
tears fall and he weeps like
; stricken soul, that sees the ligf
t Of perfect peace but cannot reac
the goal, .-
And he says: "Kind, sir, tell the &
itor,,-but his tears they fall lil
e rain, and no one knows what SO.
ows pass through his dim, di'
ordered brain.
FOLEY.