of whom he is which." Just at present he is down by the sad sea waves in close communion with a can of dynamite and a carload of scrap-iron, building an adult bombshell which he proposes to insert under the coat-tails of various "sound money" men. He is avowedly writing a "Campaign Handbook" for use of the soap-tails, or free silverites, and promises to make it "the hot stuff." I have been favored with advance sheets, sent by mail under special seal, in an asbestos pouch, labeled "This Side Up With Care." The book, when completed, is calculated to make its own paper covers curl and set divers and sundry shirttails on fire. In the opening chapter Capt. Fulton pulls the "deadly parallel" on Waco's Warwick and the GalDal News, proving that the former was a fiatist not five years ago, the latter a rantankerous free silverite, employing the identical arguments that Mrs. Lease, Peffer, Pap Reagan and Cyclone Davis do to-day. In 1891 Geo. Clark-in whose bonnet the gubernatorial bee was then buzzing-demanded "cheap money," and was willing that the government issue "three billion dollars" of irredeemable treasury notes, while the Gal-Dal, commenting on this remarkable utterance, practically endorsed it and recommended it as mutual ground upon which the Populists and Democrats could meet to combat the insolence of the Eastern money power! All this is matter of record. The only thing that surprises me is that Capt. Fulton should suppose it a revelation to the Texas people-that he should imagine they care a continental how often the Gal-Dal changes its "point of view," or what kind of financial capers the "Little Joint" cuts before high Heaven. Every effect must have an efficient cause. The Gal-Dal was uproariously for "the money of the constitution " until Cleveland took Col. Belo fishing and permitted him to spit on the royal bait. From that day it has had but one article in its confession of faith, and that reads "Grover is always right." Clark went even further than Hogg in his bid for Populist votes, and failing to get them is now playing Coriolanus and camping before the gates of the political Rome. He has taken for his motto, aut Cæsar, aut nullus, which, construed into the Texas vernacular, simply means that he'll be accepted as a little tin Jesus, or he'll shoot out the lights. Capt. Fulton should not bear down too hard on the little man. I used to put the gaffles into him occasionally in a good-natured way, but got ashamed of myself. It was just like striking a blind girl -he couldn't do anything but cry. The eulogist of John Wilkes Booth has told us that " consistency is the virtue of fools." I find no fault with Mr. Clark for changing his financial views-for aspiring to be valuable simply as a political weathervane; but it does seem to me that having publicly proclaimed Hogg " a better Democrat " than himself, he should not try to read James Stephen out of the party. Having recommended fiatism as a bridge by which the Populists might get into the Democratic party, it pains me to see the Gal-Dal chiding the " sound money men for not bolting because the state executive committee favors the free coinage of silver. 66 *** A LONG FELT WANT. THE sending of Editor Dunlop of the Chicago Dispatch to the penitentiary was a crime against the inmates of Joliet. It was unconstitutional, in that it subjects them to cruel and unusual punishment. They are criminals, it is true; but they should not be confined with a pole-cat, and compelled to breathe contagion. They were sent to prison for reformatory as well as punitive purposes, and how can they become better men while thrown in contact with such an avatar of moral rottenness? The Dispatch was simply an incarnate fetor, a printed stench born in the diseased brain of Dunlop. It was even worse than the "personal column of the Houston Post before the ICONOCLAST compelled its reformation, worse than the unclean imaginings of Rev. S. L. Morris. It was the phallic symbol of the ten-cent dive. It was the envious snail which rested not until it left its slime upon the snowy marble. It was the Judas Iscariot of journalism, the hyena that prowled by night, affrighting the innocent and feasting with hellish joy on human hearts. There should be a moral pest-house provided for such creatures as Dunlop of the Dispatch and Price of the A. P. A. Magazine. The first made vice appear like white-stoled virtue and prostitution respectable compared with his own intellectual putrescence; the last was caught peddling obscene pictures to little girls. Such cattle should be segregated, that they corrupt not common criminals should be herded by themselves like rotting lepers, or killed off as human lice. If the government will not provide a separate prison for criminals guilty of such unnatural sins against society, I will do so at my own expense, if it will give Price and Dunlop life sentences and incarcerate them in the same cell. *** THE PASSING OF PINKIE. I UNDERSTAND that Epictetus Paregoric Hill-known to his intimates as Pinkie, because he looks somewhat like a Chinese lantern-has "sold" the Houston Post to Miss Rebecca Merlindy Johnson and a couple of young pages who have been carrying her train for some years past. Pinkie has passed out of the hustle of daily journalism, leaving a hiatus as large as Symme's Hole. We shall probably never see his like again, for the good God seldom bequeaths two such geniuses to one generation. Pinkie was an unconscious humorist, scarce equaled by Mesdames Partington and Malaprop. When he seized a stylus and began to untangle international complications, or dispose of knotty problems of federal finance, an hilarious joy o'erspread the work-weary face of modern journalism. And now, alas! he has put pencil, pad and paste-pot far from him, hath hid his effulgent light beneath a bushel, and the great world is wrapped in gloom. The polar star of the politicians hath been blotted from the heavens; the guide, philosopher and friend of such inchoate statesmen as Gladstone and Bismarck hath retired from the council chamber to some inaccessible cave, and congress stands helpless and hopeless, listening in vain for the voice of the oracle. The sun continues to rise and set, the tides to follow fair Phoebe's car around the rolling earth, but in a purely perfunctory manner, as though they realized there was something wrong-that the masterhand had been removed from the helm. Life seems scarce worth the living since Pinkie's journalistic genius hath ceased to shine upon the land. He served no newspaper apprenticeship, but sprang full-grown and armed capapie into the journalistic arena-like Minerva issuing from the brow of Jove. The Post was looking for an "angel" and Providence sent Pinkie with a well filled purse. It'is probably lighter now, but he is wealthier in wisdom. He has learned that a man must know divers and sundry things besides corporation law before he is competent to pilot a daily paper adown this bank and shoal of time without a "bust." He has learned that it requires something more than a big bank account and an inexhaustible stock of impudence to build up a successful newspaper. For how much Houston's hungry bohemian horde pulled Pinkie's leg before he tired of putting up his boodle on the hypothesis that he was a journalistic pace-setter-was making and unmaking princes and potentates, laying down the law for principalities and powers-I know not; but he eventually sickened and "sold out." It was unkind of him to unload on Rebecca Merlindy, who had been his faithful female Achates for so many years. I suspect, however, that Pinkie gave her the Post to get rid of it. Being a trifle bench-legged, she could not run fast enough to avoid the blighting beneficence. I wish the new firm well. It contains every element of success if it will but practice economy. I would suggest that the three partners rent a room above the office and board themselves. Rebecca is an excellent cook, and when not cutting bias "telegrams” from Eastern papers could poach the "eggs laid by Farmer So-and-so on our editorial table.” In towns like Houston, green corn, pumpkins, wedding cake and other gastronomic delicacies frequently find their way into the sanctum. Mr. Palmer could saw up the plate-matter and turn the press, while Mr. Watson, who is an expert bicyclist, could mount his machine and deliver the paper to all customers before breakfast each morning. That's the way the founders of the ICONOCLAST and the New York Herald had to manage when they first essayed business for themselves. Of course economy is not the shortest road to wealth, but it's the surest. But I will regret Pinkie. I will miss his cute little compositions that were wont to adorn the editorial page. I have seen nothing in American literature which I enjoyed so much as the "pieces " Pinkie used to write all by himself. They were to my mature years what "Sally in Our Alley " was to my youth. But Pinkie has passed from the tripod; our brilliant Italian sunset has faded to ashen gray; in an evil hour the great journalistic |