By honest industry and a generous disregard
of what went into the newspaper, so that it paid, he had raised himself
to the highest rung of fortune's ladder, and we all know what tall
ringing _that_ is. He used to say that to accept one kind of
advertisement and to reject another, was an injustice to the public and
an outrage upon society, and that strict integrity required that he
should accept, at as much as he could get a line, every advertisement
sent for insertion. It would have done you good to have witnessed Mr.
BEZZLE'S integrity in this respect, and the noble spirit of
self-sacrifice with which he resolved that none of the public should be
slighted. He used to laugh to scorn the transcendental notion about the
editorial columns not being purchased, "If my opinions are worth
anything," he used to exclaim, "they are worth being paid for; and if I
unsay to-morrow what I said yesterday, the contradiction is only
apparent, and is in accordance with the great spirit of progress and the
breaking up of old institutions." The sequel to this magnanimous career
may be imagined. The enterprise paid so well that old BEZZLE found it to
his interest to employ a man at fifteen dollars a week to do nothing
else but write notes from "Old Subscribers," informing BEZZLE that they
had taken his "valuable paper" for over twenty years, that no family
should be without it, and that they would rather, any morning, go
without their breakfast than go without reading the _Hifalutin'
Harbinger_.
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