office-holder; and in fact I rather enjoyed such work; for
while no one in town liked my paper and all would probably
have loved to see the correspondent strung up on a telegraph
pole, still I was treated with deference and respect, simply
because they were afraid of exposure. Everybody feared I
might tell the truth and “write them up’’ sometime.
Things went along pretty smoothly for a time, and none
of the politicians or officers had thus far been attacked, al
though I knew very well things in the Mayor’s office were
conducted in a rotten manner. While laying low, I was
hard at work gathering all the evidence I could, and with
good success too.
Finally I had my data well prepared, and had collected
facts I knew would set the city wild, if exposed.
About this time circumstances compelled me to ask some
small favors from his highness the Mayor.
While he wisely refrained from saying no, still he held
back in saying yes. I left him to think over the matter and
did not go to see him for a week or two.
He had, no doubt, thought I had forgotten all about the
matter, and the request was still not complied with. Some
event now transpired, which gave me an opening to loosen
the dogs of war on the city hall, in all their ferocity; and in
the few days intervening before the issue of “TheFusilade, ”
as I will name the paper, the city’s governing power must
have felt like Damocles, seated at the feast, with a sword
supended over his head by a hair, as my friend the police
man afterwards said. Did Ido him to a crisp, you will
probably ask? Well no, not exactly; the time for that had
not yet come. But I wrote up some of the common doings
of the mayor’s court and then a dark innuendo that could
not be understood by the people, nor misunderstood by Bai
ley, the mayor. The result was that hardly had the papers
arrived when I was called upon by a messenger, saying that
Bailey wanted to see me. I was in no hurry at all about go-