TIBERIUS SMITH
would still take ink. We found a large quantity of the latter that Tib said he could use by doctoring it up.
"‘I suppose they'll be willing for us to visit the outside once in a while,' I said to Tib, 'so that we can get the news.'
"‘No,' he explained, 'we can't do that. They are willing to give us fifty dollars a week apiece for one hundred copies of my paper, containing what we can remember of recent events. They reckon that before the useless twenty thousand dollars are eaten up they will have become satiated with new-laid information. They reckon on our being filled to the brim with fresh recollections, and they only ask that we jolt out a few facts once a week. Now for issue Number One of the Tiberian Weekly!"
"And what do you suppose Tib insisted I should feed out to them? The battle between the Monitor and the Merrimac. Yes, sir; and where my memory played me false I worked the daffy corner of my brain to the limit. Bless you, if you could have read Tib's editorial, comparing the merits of the two boats, and wandering off into a dissertation of the mechanism of a ninety-horse-power racing-motor-car, and then my descriptive article of the fight itself, you would feel proud for us. Talk about your red-hot lines from the shot-riddled battle-field! I gave it in rounds and wrote as if
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