Mark Twain's sketches, new and old now first published in complete form |
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HOW I EDITED AN AGRICULTURAL PAPER |
 | Mark Twain's sketches, new and old |  |
HOW I EDITED AN AGRICULTURAL PAPER
I DID not take temporary editorship of an agricultural paper without misgivings.
Neither would a landsman take command of a ship without misgivings. But I
was in circumstances that made the salary an object. The regular editor of the
paper was going off for a holiday, and I accepted the terms he offered, and took his
place.
The sensation of being at work again was luxurious, and I wrought all the week
with unflagging pleasure. We went to press, and I waited a day with some
solicitude to see whether my effort was going to attract any notice. As I left the
with one impulse, and gave me passage-way, and I heard one or two of them say:
“That's him!” I was naturally pleased by this incident. The next morning I
found a similar group at the foot of the stairs, and scattering couples and individuals
standing here and there in the street, and over the way, watching me with interest.
The group separated and fell back as I approached, and I heard a man say, “Look
at his eye!” I pretended not to observe the notice I was attracting, but secretly
I was pleased with it, and was purposing to write an account of it to my aunt. I
went up the short flight of stairs, and heard cheery voices and a ringing laugh as I
drew near the door, which I opened, and caught a glimpse of two young rural-looking
men, whose faces blanched and lengthened when they saw me, and then
they both plunged through the window with a great crash. I was surprised.
In about half an hour an old gentleman, with a flowing beard and a fine but
rather austere face, entered, and sat down at my invitation. He seemed to have
something on his mind. He took off his hat and set it on the floor, and got out of
it a red silk handkerchief and a copy of our paper.
He put the paper on his lap, and while he polished his spectacles with his
handkerchief, he said, “Are you the new editor?”
I said I was.
“Have you ever edited an agricultural paper before?”
“No,” I said; “this is my first attempt.”
“Very likely. Have you had any experience in agriculture practically?”
“No; I believe I have not.”
“Some instinct told me so,” said the old gentleman, putting on his spectacles, and
looking over them at me with asperity, while he folded his paper into a convenient
shape. “I wish to read you what must have made me have that instinct. It was
this editorial. Listen, and see if it was you that wrote it:—
`Turnips should never be pulled, it injures them. It is much better to send a boy up and let him
shake the tree.”
“Now, what do you think of that?—for I really suppose you wrote it?”
“Think of it? Why, I think it is good. I think it is sense. I have no doubt
that every year millions and millions of bushels of turnips are spoiled in this
boy up to shake the tree”—
“Shake your grandmother! Turnips don't grow on trees!”
“Oh, they don't, don't they? Well, who said they did? The language was
intended to be figurative, wholly figurative. Anybody that knows anything will
know that I meant-that the boy should shake the vine.”
Then this old person got up and tore his paper all into small shreds, and stamped
on them, and broke several things with his cane, and said I did not know as much
as a cow; and then went out and banged the door after him, and, in short, acted
in such a way that I fancied he was displeased about something. But not knowing
what the trouble was, I could not be any help to him.
Pretty soon after this a long cadaverous creature, with lanky locks hanging down
to his shoulders, and a week's stubble bristling from the hills and valleys of his face,
darted within the door, and halted, motionless, with finger on lip, and head and
body bent in listening attitude. No sound was heard. Still he listened. No sound.
Then he turned the key in the door, and came elaborately tiptoeing toward me till
he was within long reaching distance of me, when he stopped, and after scanning
my face with intense interest for a while, drew a folded copy of our paper from his
bosom, and said—
“There, you wrote that. Read it to me—quick? Relieve me. I suffer.”
I read as follows; and as the sentences fell from my lips I could see the relief
come, I could see the drawn muscles relax, and the anxiety go out of the face, and
rest and peace steal over the features like the merciful moonlight over a desolate
landscape:
“The guano is a fine bird, but great care is necessary in rearing it. It should not be imported
earlier than June or later than September. In the winter it should be kept in a warm place, where
it can hatch out its young.
“It is evident that we are to have a backward season for grain. Therefore it will be well for the
farmer to begin setting out his cornstalks and planting his buckwheat cakes in July instead of
August.
“Concerning the pumpkin.—This berry is a favorite with the natives of the interior of New
England, who prefer it to the gooseberry for the making of fruit-cake, and who likewise give it
the preference over the raspberry for feeding cows, as being more filling and fully as satisfying.
The pumpkin is the only esculent of the orange family that will thrive in the North, except the
gourd and one or two varieties of the squash. But the custom of planting it in the front yard with
the shrubbery is fast going out of vogue, for it is now generally conceded that the pumpkin as a
shade tree is a failure.
“Now, as the warm weather approaches, and the ganders begin to spawn”—
The excited listener sprang toward
me to shake hands, and said—
“There, there—that will do. I
know I am all right now, because
you have read it just as I did, word
for word. But, stranger, when I first
read it this morning, I said to myself,
I never, never believed it before, notwithstanding
my friends kept me
under watch so strict, but now I
believe I am crazy; and with that I
fetched a howl that you might have
heard two miles, and started out to
kill somebody—because, you know,
I knew it would come to that sooner
or later, and so I might as well begin.
I read one of them paragraphs over
again, so as to be certain, and then I
burned my house down and started.
I have crippled several people, and
have got one fellow up a tree, where
where I can get him if I want him.
But I thought I would call in here
as I passed along and make the
thing perfectly certain; and now it
is certain, and I tell you it is lucky
for the chap that is in the tree. I
should have killed him, sure, as I
went back. Good-bye, sir, good-bye;
you have taken a great load off my
mind. My reason has stood the
strain of one of your agricultural
articles, and I know that nothing can ever unseat it now. Good-bye, sir.”
I felt a little uncomfortable about the cripplings and arsons this person had been
entertaining himself with, for I could not help feeling remotely accessory to them.
But these thoughts were quickly banished, for the regular editor walked in! [I
thought to myself, Now if you had gone to Egypt as I recommended you to, I
might have had a chance to get my hand in; but you wouldn't do it, and here you
are. I sort of expected you.]
The editor was looking sad and perplexed and dejected.
He surveyed the wreck which that old rioter and these two young farmers had
made, and then said, “This is a sad business—a very sad business. There is the
mucilage bottle broken, and six panes of glass, and a spittoon and two candlesticks.
But that is not the worst. The reputation of the paper is injured—and permanently,
I fear. True, there never was such a call for the paper before, and it never sold
such a large edition or soared to such celebrity;—but does one want to be famous
for lunacy, and prosper upon the infirmities of his mind? My friend, as I am an
honest man, the street out here is full of people, and others are roosting on the
fences, waiting to get a glimpse of you, because they think you are crazy. And
well they might after reading your editorials. They are a disgrace to journalism.
Why, what put it into your head that you could edit a paper of this nature? You
do not seem to know the first rudiments of agriculture. You speak of a furrow and
a harrow as being the same thing; you talk of the moulting season for cows; and
you recommend the domestication of the pole-cat on account of its playfulness and
its excellence as a ratter! Your remark that clams will lie quiet if music be played
to them was superfluous—entirely superfluous. Nothing disturbs clams. Clams
always lie quiet. Clams care nothing whatever about music. Ah, heavens and
earth, friend! if you had made the acquiring of ignorance the study of your life, you
could not have graduated with higher honor than you could to-day. I never saw
anything like it. Your observation that the horse-chestnut as an article of
commerce is steadily gaining in favor, is simply calculated to destroy this journal.
I want you to throw up your situation and go. I want no more holiday—I could
not enjoy it if I had it. Certainly not with you in my chair. I would always
stand in dread of what you might be going to recommend next. It makes me lose
all patience every time I think of your discussing oyster-beds under the head of
“Landscape Gardening.” I want you to go. Nothing on earth could persuade me
about agriculture?”
“Tell you, you cornstalk, you cabbage, you son of a cauliflower? It's the first
time I ever heard such an unfeeling remark. I tell you I have been in the editorial
business going on fourteen years, and it is the first time I ever heard of a man's
having to know anything in order to edit a newspaper. You turnip! Who write
the dramatic critiques for the second-rate papers? Why, a parcel of promoted
shoemakers and apprentice apothecaries, who know just as much about good acting
as I do about good farming and no more. Who review the books? People who
never wrote one. Who do up the heavy leaders on finance? Parties who have had
the largest opportunities for knowing nothing about it. Who criticise the Indian
campaigns? Gentlemen who do not know a war-whoop from a wigwam, and who
never have had to run a foot race with a tomahawk, or pluck arrows out of the several
members of their families to build the evening camp-fire with. Who write the
temperance appeals, and clamor about the flowing bowl? Folks who will never
draw another sober breath till they do it in the grave. Who edit the agricultural
papers, you—yam? Men, as general thing, who fail in the poetry line, yellow-colored
novel line, sensation-drama line, city-editor line, and finally fall back on
agriculture as a temporary reprieve from the poorhouse. You try to tell me
anything about the newspaper business! Sir, I have been through it from Alpha
to Omaha, and I tell you that the less a man knows the bigger the noise he makes
and the higher the salary he commands. Heaven knows if I had but been
ignorant instead of cultivated, and impudent instead of diffident, I could have made
a name for myself in this cold selfish world. I take my leave, sir. Since I have
been treated as you have treated me, I am perfectly willing to go. But I have done
my duty. I have fulfilled my contract as far as I was permitted to do it. I said I
could make your paper of interest to all classes—and I have. I said I could run
your circulation up to twenty thousand copies, and if I had had two more weeks I'd
have done it. And I'd have given you the best class of readers that ever an
agricultural paper had—not a farmer in it, nor a solitary individual who could tell
a water-melon tree trom a peach-vine to save his life. You are the loser by this
rupture, not me, Pie-plant. Adios.”
I then left.
| Mark Twain's sketches, new and old | |