You have seen how badly I behaved, or tended to behave in the past, and
lost no friends by it. In a long life of dealing in various kinds of
property, including horse-trading, very few people have ever got the
best of me, and everybody knows that this is less a boast than a
confession; and yet, this one good act of standing by this poor girl in
her dreadful plight degraded me more in the minds of the community than
all the spavins, thorough-pins, poll-evils and the like I ever concealed
or glossed over. We are all schoolboys who usually suffer our whippings
for things that should be overlooked; and the fact that we get off scot
free when we should have our jackets tanned does not seem to make the
injustice any easier to bear.
Dick McGill, the editor of the scurrilous Monterey _Journal_ was, as
usual, the chief imp of this as of any other deviltry his sensational
paper could take a part in. Of course, he would be on Buck Gowdy's side;
for what rights had such people as Magnus and Rowena and I?
"A wedding took place out on the wild shores of Hell Slew last week,"
said this paper. "It was not a case, exactly, of the funeral baked meats
coldly furnishing forth the marriage supper; but the economy was quite
as striking. The celebration of the arrival of the heir of the Manor
(though let us hope not of the manner) was merged in the wedding
festivities. We make our usual announcements: Married at the residence
of J.T. Vandemark, Miss Rowena Fewkes to Mr.
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