But at the crater no such precaution seemed to be necessary.  It is true that the editor did use the pronoun “we,” in speaking of himself; but he took all other occasions to assert his individuality, and to use his journal diligently in its behalf.  Thus, whenever he got into the law, his columns were devoted to publicly maintaining his own side of the question, although such a course was not only opposed to every man’s sense of propriety, but was directly flying into the teeth of the laws of the land; but little did he care for that.  He was a public servant, and of course all he did was right.  To be sure, other public servants were in the same category, all they did being wrong; but he had the means of telling his own story, and a large number of gaping dunces were ever ready to believe him.  His manner of filling his larder is particularly worthy of being mentioned.  Quite as often as once a week, his journal had some such elegant article as this, viz:—­“Our esteemed friend, Peter Snooks”—­perhaps it was Peter Snooks, Esquire—­“has just brought us a fair specimen of his cocoa-nuts, which we do not hesitate in recommending to the housekeepers of the crater, as among the choicest of the group.”  Of course, Squire Snooks was grateful for this puff, and often brought more cocoa-nuts.  The same great supervision was extended to the bananas, the bread-fruit, the cucumbers, the melons, and even the squashes, and always with the same results to the editorial larder.  Once, however, this worthy did get himself in a quandary with his use of the imperial pronoun.  A mate of one of the vessels inflicted personal chastisement on him, for some impertinent comments he saw fit to make on the honest tar’s vessel; and, this being matter of intense interest to the public mind, he went into a detail of all the evolutions of the combat.  Other men may pull each other’s noses, and inflict kicks and blows, without the world’s caring a straw about it; but the editorial interest is too intense to be overlooked in this manner.  A bulletin of the battle was published; the editor speaking of himself always in the plural, out of excess of modesty, and to avoid egotism(!) in three columns which were all about himself, using such expressions as these:—­“We now struck our antagonist a blow with our fist, and followed this up with a kick of our foot, and otherwise we made an assault on him that he will have reason to remember to his dying day.”  Now, these expressions, for a time, set all the old women in the colony against the editor, until he went into an elaborate explanation, showing that his modesty was so painfully sensitive that he could not say I on any account, though he occupied three more columns of his paper in explaining the state of our feelings.  But, at first, the cry went forth that the battle had been of two against one; and that even the simple-minded colonists set down as somewhat cowardly.  So much for talking about we in the bulletin of a single combat!