I found this exchange in the February 23, 1899 edition of The Chatham Record.
“I’ve come to kill a printer, ” said the little man.
“Any printer in particular?” asked the foreman.
“Oh, any one will do. I would prefer a small one, but I’ve got to make some sort of a blad at a fight or leave home, since the paper called my wife’s pink tea a ‘swill affair.'” — Indianapolis Journal.
I looked up what I thought might be the word “blad” from the barely legible text and found the definition: “a promotional flyer or mockup for a product, especially for a book”. Sounds reasonable. I’ll go with that.
Incidentally, when I combed the internet in search of a more readable version of the text, many of the search results were blog posts stating “I want to kill my printer”. Yikes.
