GOVERNOR, 1903
grata in the editorials. The reasons given in support of the act were never answered; they could not be; but the public was made familiar with the fact that I wore boots, that my hair, of which it may be incidentally noted there is a full supply, was often frowsy, and that I hunted bugs in Wetzel Swamp and other places. Artists were employed to exercise their ingenuity and prostitute their talents in making ugly pictures, and the newspapers, as the children are wont to say, made “snoots” at me. In one sense the attacks were a tribute, since, after raking the field with the aid of money and research, as I have no doubt occurred, they were unable to find that I had ever taken money which did not belong to me, that I had ever betrayed anybody to his disadvantage, or that I had ever led any but the decent life of a gentleman. Besides, they overdid the matter. They made me known all over the United States and people felt that there must be some character in a man who did not fear the united power of the press and could come, unscathed, out of a contest with it.
A few years later there was sent to me an article printed in Birmingham, Alabama, telling of the important events which had occurred on the 9th of April. Among them were the discovery of the Mississippi by Ferdinand de Soto, the Battle of Appomattox, and the birth of Samuel W. Pennypacker, Governor of Pennsylvania. My biography was printed throughout the far West. All sensible people, including such able newspaper correspondents as George Alfred Townsend (“Gath”), regarded it as entirely proper legislation likely to be helpful to their profession. Poor Smith, however, had lost his case, he was not large enough to see that my duty was not toward him or the newspapers, his vanity was hurt, and he made a personal matter of it, and became an enemy for life. Everything thereafter which he thought would be disagreeable to me was printed in his paper. On visiting “Kuchler's Roost” on the mountain top at Reading, at the request of its old owner, I wrote an
