I was a printer's "devil," and a progressive and aspiring one.

My uncle had me on his paper (the Weekly Hannibal Journal, two dollars a year in advance -- five hundred subscribers, and they paid in cordwood, cabbages, and unmarketable turnips), and on a lucky summer's day he left town to be gone a week, and asked me if I thought I could edit one issue of the paper judiciously.

Ah! didn't I want to try! Higgins was the editor on the rival paper.

He had lately been jilted, and one night a friend found an open note on the poor fellow's bed, in which he stated that he could not longer endure life and had drowned himself in Bear Creek.

The friend ran down there and discovered Higgins wading back to shore.