When I went on
duty I found the chief editor sitting tilted back in a three-legged chair
with his feet on a pine table. There was another pine table in the room
and another afflicted chair, and both were half buried under newspapers
and scraps and sheets of manuscript. There was a wooden box of sand,
sprinkled with cigar stubs and "old soldiers," and a stove with a door
hanging by its upper hinge. The chief editor had a long-tailed black
cloth frock-coat on, and white linen pants. His boots were small and
neatly blacked. He wore a ruffled shirt, a large seal-ring, a standing
collar of obsolete pattern, and a checkered neckerchief with the ends
hanging down. Date of costume about 1848. He was smoking a cigar, and
trying to think of a word, and in pawing his hair he had rumpled his
locks a good deal. He was scowling fearfully, and I judged that he was
concocting a particularly knotty editorial. He told me to take the
exchanges and skim through them and write up the "Spirit of the Tennessee
Press," condensing into the article all of their contents that seemed of
interest.
I wrote as follows:
SPIRIT OF THE TENNESSEE PRESS
The editors of the Semi-Weekly Earthquake evidently labor under a
misapprehension with regard to the Dallyhack railroad.
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