Yet her weak condition made him conceal another trouble that had come
upon him. It was in the third month of his employment on the "Clarion"
that one afternoon, while correcting some proofs on his chief's desk, he
came upon the following editorial paragraph:--
"The played-out cant of 'pioneer genius' and 'pioneer discovery' appears
to have reached its climax in the attempt of some of our contemporaries
to apply it to Dan Harcourt's new Tasajara Job before the legislature.
It is perfectly well known in Harcourt's own district that, far from
being a pioneer and settler HIMSELF he simply succeeded after a
fashion to the genuine work of one Elijah Curtis, an actual pioneer
and discoverer, years before, while Harcourt, we believe, was keeping a
frontier doggery in Sidon, and dispensing 'tanglefoot' and salt junk
to the hayfooted Pike Countians of his precinct. This would make him as
much of the 'pioneer discoverer' as the rattlesnake who first takes up
board and lodgings and then possession in a prairie dog's burrow. And if
the traveler's tale is true that the rattlesnake sometimes makes a meal
of his landlord, the story told at Sidon may be equally credible that
the original pioneer mysteriously disappeared about the time that Dan
Harcourt came into the property. From which it would seem that Harcourt
is not in a position for his friends to invite very deep scrutiny into
his 'pioneer' achievements.
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