Omaha daily bee., 1918-01-06
When Henry D. Estabrook Wrote for The Bee
HIS O,oa Account Of a Short Service as City Editor
and ReDorter
and Reporter

getting mad about it, egad; I'd join a pro-
fession which would! So / quit journalism
and entered the law.
"By a singular coincidence, and what
fain believed at the time to be retributive
justice, my first case on emerging from law
school was suit for libel against The Bee.
Mr.. Rosewater had called United States
consul to Shanghai cross between drunk
ard and monomaniac. Now obviously this
language was libelous per Sc and tended to
bring my client into public scandal, infamy
and disgrace and to vex, harass, oppress I'M
poverish and wholly ruin him, the said client,
to his damage, $4,000. Another $4,000 libel
suit, you observe. intended TO show Mr..
Rosewater 'trick-mule performance worth
two of my earlier achievements. But as
pondered over the accumulating depositions
which Mr.. Rosewater commenced to take
in different parts of the country was forced
to believe that my client had been what might
be called all inebriate. 1t might be also
that he was something of a monomaniac,
but l pinned my faith to the difficulty Of
proving that he was cross between the two.
At all events / would make up in vitupera-
ton what lacked in the way of evidence.
$50 l told the jury that when Rosewater
launched his paper he had ransacked bug
ology to find some insect which would typ
ify his aspirations in life and had hit upon
the bee. That the bees only object in liv-
ing was honey, which rhymed with money.
That its weapons of offense and defense was
not sword, nor yet bludgeon but only a
silver, which it carried concealed in the
most conspicuous and at the same time the
most intellectual portion of its anatomy. That
my client would possibly have swallowed the
venom of the bee in the shape of bolus,
but objected to taking it hypodermically by
way of sting. That it was true my client
drank occasionally, but only for his stom-
achs sake, according to the admonitlon OF
St. Paul, which meant, of course, that he
drank for Gods sake But that whatever
else he might be he was a thoroughbred and
neither cross, mongrel, sambo nor any
other kind of an infusion, and | hoped that
their verdict would enable him to live on a
liquid diet for the remainder of his days.
The Jury was out some time and returned a
verdict in favor of the plaintiff for just 5
cents-the retail price of glass of beer. |
do not know how my client managed to get
drunk on it, but he did. He faunted that
verdict in every saloon in Omaha as vim
dication that he was not the kind OF cross
he had been cracked up to be- The Bee
haunted that verdict as adding considerable
insult to very little injury. / haunted that
verdict as the only verdict in any amount
which had ever been obtained against The
Bee for libel and as the dazzling result of
my individual prowess
"All this occurred some 20 years ago. 1t
is wonderful how our opinions are modified
by the experience OF 20 years and how more
and more tentative they become as the years
20 on. / am not so cocksure of anything as
used to be. As for newspapers, / frankly
confess that /, personally, would not know
how to improve on the poorest Of them and
submit that such modesty on the part of
one of your regular subscribers is as rare
as it is beautiful. s.
Talk about censorship Of the press! OF
arraigning the sword against the pen! Never
again. For veal or woe the pen henceforth
is to be the maker of our laws and the ar
bitter of our destinites. Never again. The
dogma that human lives can control human
thought or determine what man shall be-
lieve or what man shall say, so long as
he believes in what he says, is medieval
hallucination like the divinity of kings. AS
well illuminate against old ocean laundering
along its shores! Never again. You can
blindfold justice as of old, but not the stars,
thank God but not the stars!
H. D. ESTABRCOK.
Chicago, May, 1896"