People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 April 1893 — The Arizona Kicker. [ARTICLE]

The Arizona Kicker.

A QUEER LOT.— Last Saturday big Jim Taylor, the freighter, who has to hold printed matter at the end of his nose to read it, and who couldn’t spell out the name “California” in less than five minutes to save his neck, stopped his copy of the Kicker because we didn't have but two accounts of stage robberies that week. On Monday, “Dandy Charlie,” the gambler, stopped his paper because we refused to publish a column biography of John C. Heenan. Tuesday after noon that old cayuse familiarly known as Tom Perry wanted to devote the local page to a history of the pyramids of Egypt and when we stood him off he got mad and ordered his name off the books. Wednesday morning Judge Green walked in on us and demanded to know whether we were running a saw mill or a newspaper. He had got hold of an account of the Bender family, of Kansas, and never having seen it in the Kicker he thought we were beating our subscribers. We offered to compromise by publishing an account of the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, but he went away mad and wouldn’t be found dead with a copy of our paper in his pocket. We didn’t expect to hit everybody’s tastes when we opened our shop here. We propose to run things after our own policy, and those who don’t like it must stand from under. Every week we present a combination of murder, love, elopement, robbery, assassination, religion, politics, poetry, executions, scandals, science and agriculture, and the critter who obstinately insists that there is a vacuum somewhere doesn’t know the difference between wolf meat and porterhouse steak. NOT OUR WAY—We notice that an Ohio editor has declined the nomination of representative of fill a vacancy in the state legislature. Not only that, but he gave as his opinion that no editor should accept a political office or any sort of favor from a railroad or other corporation. By looking at a map of the United States we perceive that Ohio is bounded on the north by Michigan and Lake Erie, on the east by Pennsylvania, on the south by West Virginia and Kentucky and on the west by Indiana, but how such an editor as that is bounded we shall not attempt to figure. By working a potato patch in shares during off days and Sundays, and by making his wife go barefooted through the winter and cut her own corns in the summer, he may manage to keep his head above water in Ohio, but he must not let the western fever get hold of him. He could’nt exist for two weeks out here, even when roosts are in season and at their cheapest. Years ago when our eyebrows were silken and our feet tender, we had a half formed idea that it was the duty of an editor to boost everybody else into public view and remain in the background himself. We even decided that a railroad pass, good from San Francisco to New York, might bias his opinion of roadbeds, locomotive and sidetracks. We even began our editorial career by refusing to pay a probate judge a bribe of $50 to get $600 worth of fat advertising. It is needless to remark that we no longer resemble the jack rabbit in appearance or do we do business on the Ohio principle. We take every thing in the shape of a pass offered us. We miss no occasion to make a public speech. We ache for office and get it—three or four of them. If there is any head to a table at a banquet we are there. We boost ourself first and the public afterwards. If we were offered the place of minister to England to-morrow we’d take it quicker’n scat. In our opinion there’s nothing too good for an editor, and we frankly admit that when we hear of a case like that in Ohio we feel like writing to the onery galoot and asking what right he has outside of an idiot asylum.

WILLIAM IS WAITING—About two months ago an individual who called himself “Wild Bill” started in business at the Grand Canyon crossing as a road agent. He made a botch of it from the start, and the Kicker came out and said that he hadn’t sand enough to pat a mule on the kicking end. The other day we received a letter from William in which he made all sort of declarations as to what he would do in case he got us under the muzzels of his guns. We have got a picture of our mind’s eye. In the foreground Wild William sits on a rock beside the trail

patiently waiting our appearance. Afar off we can be seen coming up on our mule on our way to Prescott. As we draw near we are commanded to throw up our hands and dismount, and William sizes us up good for the price of a curled hair mattress with a red cover. He has just uttered his first cackle of satisfaction when northern Arizona suddenly rises up under his feet and lets him drop with a smash that loosens all his hair at the roots, and when he has come too he has gone out of the road agent business forever. For fear W. B. may not follow us closely we will drop the feather of rhetoric and pick up the crowbar of fact and assure him of our intention to bring about an early meeting. We hope he will be loaded for ba’r. If we can’t get him on the run inside of two minutes from the time we sight him, we’ll quit the territory within a month, and never enter it again.