|OUR attention has been called to a remark made by the New York
_Tribune_, which would intimate that the journal referred to didn't
like Acting-Postmaster F. Hatton, and characterizing the editor of The
Boomerang as a "journalistic pal" of General Hatton's. We certainly
regret that circumstances have made it necessary for us to rebuke the
_Tribune_ and speak, harshly to it. Frank Hatton may be a journalistic
pal of ours. Perhaps so. We would be glad to class him as a journalistic
pal of ours, even though he may not have married rich. We think just as
much of General Hatton as though he had married wealthy. We can't all
marry rich and travel over the country, and edit our papers vicariously.
That is something that can only happen to the blessed few.
It would be nice for us to go to Europe and have our _pro tem._ editor
at home working for $20 per week, and telegraphing us every few minutes
to know whether he should support Cornell or Folger. The pleasure of
being an editor is greatly enhanced by such privileges, and we often
feel that if we could get away from the hot, close office of The
Boomerang, and roam around over Scandahoovia and the Bosphorus, and
mould the policy of _The Boomerang_ by telegraph, and wear a cork helmet
and tight pants, we would be far happier. Still it may be that Whitelaw
Reid is no happier with his high priced wife and his own record of
crime, than we are in our simplicity here in the wild and rugged west,
as we write little epics for our one-horse paper, and borrow tobacco of
the foreman.
It is not all of life to live, nor all of death to die. We should live
for a purpose, Mr. Reid, not aimlessly like a blind Indian, 200 miles
from the reservation at Christmas-tide.
Now, Mr. Reid, if you will just tell Mr. Nicholson, when you get back
home, that in referring to us as a journalistic pal of Frank Hatton he
has exceeded his authority, we will feel grateful to you--and so will
Mr. Hatton. If you don't do it, we shall be called upon to stop the
_Tribune_, and subscribe for _Harper's Weekly_. This we should dislike
to do very much, because we have taken the _Tribune_ for years. We used
to take it when the editor stayed at home and wrote for it. Our
father used to take the _Tribune_, too. He is the editor of the Omaha
_Republican_, and needs a good New York paper, but he has quit taking
the _Tribune_. He said he must withdraw his patronage from a paper that
is edited by a tourist. All the Nyes will now stop taking the _Tribune_,
and all subscribe for some other dreary paper. We don't know just
whether it will be _Harper's Weekly_, or the _Shroud_.
Later.--Mr. Reid went through here on Tuesday, and told us that he
might have been wrong in referring to us as a journalistic pal of Frank
Hatton, and in fact did not know that the _Tribune_ had said so. He
simply told Nicholson to kind of generally go for the administration,
and turn over a great man every morning with his scathing pen, and
probably Nicholson had kind of run out of great men, and tackled the
North American Indian fighter of _The Boomerang_. Mr. Reid also said, as
he rubbed some camphor ice on his nose, and borrowed a dollar from his
wife to buy his supper here, that when he got back to New York, he was
going to write some pieces for the _Tribune_ himself. He was afraid he
couldn't trust Nicholson, and the paper had now got where it needed an
editor right by it all the time. He said also that he couldn't afford
to be wakened up forty times a night to write telegrams to New York,
telling the _Tribune_ who to indorse for governor. It was a nuisance, he
said, to stand at the center of a way station telegraph office, in his
sun-flower night shirt, and write telegrams to Nicholson, telling him
who to sass the next morning. Once, he said, he telegraphed him to
dismember a journalistic pal of Frank Hatton's, and the operator made a
mistake. So the next morning the _Tribune_ had a regular old ring-tail
peeler of an editorial, which planted one of Mr. Reid's special friends
in an early grave. So we may know from this that moulding the course of
a great paper by means of red messages, is fraught with some unpleasant
features.
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