Once or
twice it boiled over and I was threatened with summary arrest. When
I got home, I slept on the counter with the edition for my pillow,
in order to be up with the first gleam of daylight to skirmish for
newsboys. I gathered them in from street and avenue, compelled them
to come in if they were not willing, and made such inducements for
them that shortly South Brooklyn resounded with the cry of "News"
from sunrise to sunset on Saturday. The politicians who had been
laughing at my "weekly funeral" beheld with amazement the paper
thrust under their noses at every step. They heard its praises, or
the other thing, sung on every hand. From their point of view it
was the same thing: the paper was talked of. Their utmost effort
had failed of that. When, on June 5, Her birthday, I paid down in
hard cash what was left of the purchase sum and hoisted the flag
over an independent newspaper, freed from debt, they came around
with honeyed speeches to make friends. I scarcely heard them. Deep
down in my soul a voice kept repeating unceasingly: Elizabeth is
free! She is free, free! That night, in the seclusion of my den,
clutching grimly the ladder upon which I had at last got my feet,
I resolved that I would reach the top, or die climbing and found me
sleepless, pouring out my heart to her, four thousand miles away.
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