The Arizona Kicker.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 946, 18 April 1890, Page 8

The Arizona Kicker.

Real Editorial Happiness Found Only in the West. We extract the following itemß from the last issue of the Arizona Kicker ~- Apologetical. —W e must apologise to our readers this week for any lack of interesting matter in The Kicker. Monday morning as we were busy at the editorial table, that personage known as ‘Kansas Joe' entered the office and fired both barrels of a shot-gun at us from a distance of about eighteen feet. One of the shot raked our scalp, while the rest passed above our head into the wall. In another thirty seconds Joseph was dead. We pulled on him with a revolver under the smoke and dropped him with a single bullet. Scores of our leading citizens prononnee it the finest shot they have ever known There was the usual inquest, burial, etc., occupying so much of our time that we could uot give the paper the attention it deserved. Next week, unless we have to kill Teunessee Bill, the Kicker will again be fully up to the mark.

See His Ad. —We call attention to the two-column advertisement of the White Elephant drug store, which is to be found on our third page. This advertisement was not giveu The Kicker because we had ascertained that Mr Drew, the druggist, was an absconder from New Jersey, and was here living under a false name and with a woman not his wife, but because he is a believer in printer’s ink aud has faith that The Kicker will increase his already large and profitable retail trads.

Happens That Way. — On Friday afternoon we approached Henry Smith, of the dry goods firm of Smith Bros., and suggested that he advertise his business in The Kicker. He courteously replied that he would see us iu the huckleberry country—vherever that is—before he would do business with us. One word brought on another, and the result was that he knocked U 3 down, picked up our half-unconscious body, and mopped it around until he began to sweat his collar, and we were then flung out of the door into the sand.'

We can’t and don’t expect to lick everybody we bump up against in this country. We have chawed up seven for every time we have been done up, and everybody says that is a record to boast of. As for Henry Smith,' while we owe him no grudge, we deem it our duty to find out where he is wanted by the police, and we’ll bet a barrel of sugar he jumps this town inside of two weeks. Let Him Howl. —Our bow-backed, lopshouldered, knee sprung, green-eyed contemporary down the street is half dead with envy because we were the leading feature at Mrs O’Hara’s party the other evening, while he received the cold cut. While we were receiving a hundred compliments on our late editorial iu regard to colonizing Iceland with American Indians, he was sitting among his paste-pots with a cold glare in his eyes. While we were leading the first quadrille ho was kicking cockroaches in the semi-dark-ness, and while we were declaiming ‘Sheridan’s Ride’ in our own inimitable style the fire of envy was consuming his small, cheap soul, which was doubtless purchased at some second-hand sale in the east.

Let him howl, however. We can afford to pass him by' with good nature. We areas far above the old vulture as Pike’s Peak is above the deepest spot in the Bea. Explanatory.—An explanation is due to our readers that still another breach-of-promise suit has been brought against us, making the seventeenth in two years. This time it is the widow Cumbers who brings suit, aud she lays her damage at §50,000. Society hero is peculiar. Lone women eeek this locality to catch a husband. Any unmarried man is fair game, and ordinary courtesy is construed to mean love and a proposal. Take the last case for instance. Mrs Cumbers invited us to dinner. She said it was in acknowledgment of the power of the press. We put on a clean shirt and comhed our hair, aud she took it to mean that we were gone on her. We spoke kindly of the way she boiled corned beef, and she argued that we loved her. We praised her prune pie, and she replied that she could be ready in three weeks.

The sixteen other suits have all been decided in our favour, and of course this one will be. It is a plan to capture us or our cash, but we don’t surrender. Even when we have had offers to settle a $50,000 suit for $7 and a calico dress wj have sternly held to our course and let the case go to trial.