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As I grew older, I saw my power and indulged it; and, being scolded for sarcasm, I was flattered into believing I had wit; so I punned and jested, lampooned and satirized, till I was as much a torment to others as I was tormented myself. The secret of all this was that I was unhappy. Nobody loved me: I felt it to my heart of hearts. I was conscious of injustice, and the sense of it made me bitter.

John Slidell was already shining beside him. They were co-members of the Elkin Club, then in its glory. It was trying energetically to see what incredible quantities of Madeira it could drink. Judge Mazereau was "avocat-général" and was being lampooned by the imbecile wit of the singers and dancers of the calinda in Congo Square.

There can be no doubt about this at all. Take your seat in the gallery and see for yourself. The first question which rises to the lips is where are the young men, those crude and callow youths masquerading as legislators which the vernacular press has so excessively lampooned?

Judge Westcott fired the Convention with his eloquence and brought showers of applause when he quoted at length from a speech Mr. Wilson had made when president of Princeton, and for which he had been hissed, lampooned, and derided by the Princeton opposition. Judge Westcott said: Men are known by what they say and do. Men are known by those who hate them and those who oppose them.

Assumptions so open to ridicule, and so disparaging to far abler men, told as disadvantageously upon his fame as upon his character. He became the butt of contemporary satire. Horace Smith, Moore, Shelley, Byron, lampooned him savagely. The latter made him the hero of his wicked "Vision of Judgment," and to him dedicated his "Don Juan."

I did it, putting the article into the form of a parody on the "Burial of Sir John Moore" and a pretty crude parody it was, too. Then I lampooned two prominent citizens outrageously not because they had done anything to deserve, but merely because I thought it was my duty to make the paper lively.

These telegrams were similarly worded, and read: "The yacht Energon has arrived. There is something in this. I advise you to come." Bassett was laughed at for his pains. Goliah and Bassett were cartooned and lampooned unmercifully, the former, as the Old Man of the Sea, riding on the latter's neck.

Addison by giving him that name; and I feel indignation when he is abused, both from his own merit, and having been your father's friend; besides that it is naturally shocking to see any one lampooned after his death by the same man who had paid him the most servile court while he lived and was highly obliged by him."

The two lampooned citizens came with threats of libel, and went away incensed at my insignificance. The country editor pranced in with a war-whoop next day, suffering for blood to drink; but he ended by forgiving me cordially and inviting me down to the drug store to wash away all animosity in a friendly bumper of "Fahnestock's Vermifuge." It was his little joke.

Bettesworth," answered he, "I was in my youth acquainted with great lawyers, who knowing my disposition to satire advised me that if any scoundrel or blockhead whom I had lampooned should ask, Are you the author of this paper? I should tell him that I was not the author; and therefore I tell you, Mr. Bettesworth, that I am not the author of these lines." Johnson's Works, viii. 216.