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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Editorial Wild Oats, by Mark Twain
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Editorial Wild Oats
+
+Author: Mark Twain
+
+Release Date: October 6, 2006 [EBook #19484]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EDITORIAL WILD OATS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzan Flanagan and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Editorial Wild Oats
+
+BY
+
+Mark Twain
+
+ILLUSTRATED
+
+NEW YORK AND LONDON
+HARPER & BROTHERS
+PUBLISHERS--MCMV
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1875, 1899, 1903, by SAMUEL L. CLEMENS.
+
+Copyright, 1879, 1899, by SAMUEL L. CLEMENS.
+
+Copyright, 1905, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
+
+_All rights reserved._
+
+Published September, 1905.
+
+[Illustration: See p. 57
+
+"I FANCIED HE WAS DISPLEASED"]
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+                                                   PAGE
+MY FIRST LITERARY VENTURE                             3
+
+JOURNALISM IN TENNESSEE                              11
+
+NICODEMUS DODGE--PRINTER                             30
+
+MR. BLOKE'S ITEM                                     41
+
+HOW I EDITED AN AGRICULTURAL
+PAPER                                                52
+
+THE KILLING OF JULIUS CÆSAR "LOCALIZED"              70
+
+
+
+
+Illustrations
+
+
+"I FANCIED HE WAS DISPLEASED"            _Frontispiece_
+
+"HE HAD CONCLUDED HE
+WOULDN'T"                              _Facing p._    4
+
+"GILLESPIE HAD CALLED"                 "             24
+
+"WHEEZING THE MUSIC OF 'CAMPTOWN
+RACES'"                                "             38
+
+"I HAVE READ THIS ABSURD ITEM
+OVER"                                  "             50
+
+"A LONG CADAVEROUS CREATURE"           "             58
+
+"THERE WAS NOTHING IN THE
+POCKETS"                               "             82
+
+
++----------------------------------------------------------------------+
+|Transcriber's Note: The dialect in this book is transcribed exactly as|
+|in the original.                                                         |
++----------------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+Editorial Wild Oats
+
+
+
+
+My First Literary Venture
+
+
+I was a very smart child at the age of thirteen--an unusually
+smart child, I thought at the time. It was then that I did my first
+newspaper scribbling, and most unexpectedly to me it stirred up a
+fine sensation in the community. It did, indeed, and I was very
+proud of it, too. I was a printer's "devil," and a progressive and
+aspiring one. My uncle had me on his paper (the _Weekly Hannibal
+Journal_, two dollars a year, in advance--five hundred subscribers,
+and they paid in cord-wood, cabbages, and unmarketable turnips),
+and on a lucky summer's day he left town to be gone a week, and
+asked me if I thought I could edit one issue of the paper
+judiciously. Ah! didn't I want to try! Higgins was the editor on
+the rival paper. He had lately been jilted, and one night a friend
+found an open note on the poor fellow's bed, in which he stated
+that he could no longer endure life and had drowned himself in Bear
+Creek. The friend ran down there and discovered Higgins wading back
+to shore. He had concluded he wouldn't. The village was full of it
+for several days, but Higgins did not suspect it. I thought this
+was a fine opportunity. I wrote an elaborately wretched account of
+the whole matter, and then illustrated it with villanous cuts
+engraved on the bottoms of wooden type with a jack-knife--one of
+them a picture of Higgins wading out into the creek in his shirt,
+with a lantern, sounding the depth of the water with a walking-stick.
+I thought it was desperately funny, and was densely unconscious that
+there was any moral obliquity about such a publication. Being
+satisfied with this effort, I looked around for other worlds to
+conquer, and it struck me that it would make good, interesting matter
+to charge the editor of a neighboring country paper with a piece of
+gratuitous rascality and "see him squirm."
+
+[Illustration: "HE HAD CONCLUDED HE WOULDN'T"]
+
+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 it, but merely because I thought
+it was my duty to make the paper lively.
+
+Next I gently touched up the newest stranger--the lion of the day,
+the gorgeous journeyman tailor from Quincy. He was a simpering
+coxcomb of the first water, and the "loudest" dressed man in the
+State. He was an inveterate woman-killer. Every week he wrote lushy
+"poetry" for the _Journal_, about his newest conquest. His rhymes
+for my week were headed, "TO MARY IN H--L," meaning to Mary in
+Hannibal, of course. But while setting up the piece I was suddenly
+riven from head to heel by what I regarded as a perfect thunderbolt
+of humor, and I compressed it into a snappy footnote at the
+bottom--thus:
+
+  "We will let this thing pass, just this once; but we wish Mr. J.
+  Gordon Runnels to understand distinctly that we have a character
+  to sustain, and from this time forth when he wants to commune
+  with his friends in h--l, he must select some other medium than
+  the columns of this journal!"
+
+The paper came out, and I never knew any little thing attract so
+much attention as those playful trifles of mine.
+
+For once the _Hannibal Journal_ was in demand--a novelty it had
+not experienced before. The whole town was stirred. Higgins dropped
+in with a double-barrelled shot-gun early in the forenoon. When he
+found that it was an infant (as he called me) that had done him the
+damage, he simply pulled my ears and went away; but he threw up his
+situation that night and left town for good. The tailor came with
+his goose and a pair of shears; but he despised me, too, and
+departed for the South that night. The two lampooned citizens came
+with threats of libel, and went away incensed at my insignificance.
+The country editor pranced in with a warwhoop 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. My uncle was very angry when he got back--unreasonably so, I
+thought, considering what an impetus I had given the paper, and
+considering also that gratitude for his preservation ought to have
+been uppermost in his mind, inasmuch as by his delay he had so
+wonderfully escaped dissection, tomahawking, libel, and getting his
+head shot off. But he softened when he looked at the accounts and
+saw that I had actually booked the unparalleled number of
+thirty-three new subscribers, and had the vegetables to show for
+it--cord-wood, cabbage, beans, and unsalable turnips enough to run
+the family for two years!
+
+
+
+
+Journalism in Tennessee
+
+    The editor of the Memphis _Avalanche_ swoops thus mildly down upon
+    a correspondent who posted him as a Radical: "While he was writing
+    the first word, the middle, dotting his i's, crossing his t's, and
+    punching his period, he knew he was concocting a sentence that was
+    saturated with infamy and reeking with falsehood."--_Exchange_.
+
+
+I was told by the physician that a Southern climate would improve
+my health, and so I went down to Tennessee and got a berth on the
+_Morning-Glory and Johnson County Warwhoop_ as associate editor.
+When I went on duty I found the chief editor sitting tilted back in
+a three-legged chair with his feet on a pine table. There was
+another pine table in the room and another afflicted chair, and
+both were half buried under newspapers and scraps and sheets of
+manuscript. There was a wooden box of sand, sprinkled with
+cigar-stubs and "old soldiers," and a stove with a door hanging by
+its upper hinge. The chief editor had a long-tailed black cloth
+frock-coat on, and white linen pants. His boots were small and
+neatly blacked. He wore a ruffled shirt, a large seal ring, a
+standing collar of obsolete pattern, and a checkered neckerchief
+with the ends hanging down. Date of costume about 1848. He was
+smoking a cigar, and trying to think of a word, and in pawing his
+hair he had rumpled his locks a good deal. He was scowling
+fearfully, and I judged that he was concocting a particularly
+knotty editorial. He told me to take the exchanges and skim through
+them and write up the "Spirit of the Tennessee Press," condensing
+into the article all of their contents that seemed of interest.
+
+I wrote as follows:
+
+  "SPIRIT OF THE TENNESSEE PRESS
+
+  "The editors of the _Semi-Weekly Earthquake_ evidently labor
+  under a misapprehension with regard to the Ballyhack railroad. It
+  is not the object of the company to leave Buzzardville off to one
+  side. On the contrary, they consider it one of the most important
+  points along the line, and consequently can have no desire to
+  slight it. The gentlemen of the _Earthquake_ will, of course,
+  take pleasure in making the correction.
+
+  "John W. Blossom, Esq., the able editor of the Higginsville
+  _Thunderbolt and Battle-Cry of Freedom_, arrived in the city
+  yesterday. He is stopping at the Van Buren House.
+
+  "We observe that our contemporary of the Mud Springs _Morning
+  Howl_ has fallen into the error of supposing that the election of
+  Van Werter is not an established fact, but he will have
+  discovered his mistake before this reminder reaches him, no
+  doubt. He was doubtless misled by incomplete election returns.
+
+  "It is pleasant to note that the city of Blathersville is
+  endeavoring to contract with some New York gentlemen to pave its
+  wellnigh impassable streets with the Nicholson pavement. The
+  _Daily Hurrah_ urges the measure with ability, and seems
+  confident of ultimate success."
+
+I passed my manuscript over to the chief editor for acceptance,
+alteration, or destruction. He glanced at it and his face clouded.
+He ran his eye down the pages, and his countenance grew portentous.
+It was easy to see that something was wrong. Presently he sprang up
+and said:
+
+"Thunder and lightning! Do you suppose I am going to speak of
+those cattle that way? Do you suppose my subscribers are going to
+stand such gruel as that? Give me the pen!"
+
+I never saw a pen scrape and scratch its way so viciously, or
+plough through another man's verbs and adjectives so relentlessly.
+While he was in the midst of his work, somebody shot at him through
+the open window, and marred the symmetry of my ear.
+
+"Ah," said he, "that is that scoundrel Smith, of the _Moral
+Volcano_--he was due yesterday." And he snatched a navy revolver
+from his belt and fired. Smith dropped, shot in the thigh. The shot
+spoiled Smith's aim, who was just taking a second chance, and he
+crippled a stranger. It was me. Merely a finger shot off.
+
+Then the chief editor went on with his erasures and
+interlineations. Just as he finished them a hand-grenade came down
+the stove-pipe, and the explosion shivered the stove into a
+thousand fragments. However, it did no further damage, except that
+a vagrant piece knocked a couple of my teeth out.
+
+"That stove is utterly ruined," said the chief editor.
+
+I said I believed it was.
+
+"Well, no matter--don't want it this kind of weather. I know the
+man that did it. I'll get him. Now, _here_ is the way this stuff
+ought to be written."
+
+I took the manuscript. It was scarred with erasures and
+interlineations till its mother wouldn't have known it if it had
+had one. It now read as follows:
+
+  "SPIRIT OF THE TENNESSEE PRESS
+
+  "The inveterate liars of the _Semi-Weekly Earthquake_ are
+  evidently endeavoring to palm off upon a noble and chivalrous
+  people another of their vile and brutal falsehoods with regard to
+  that most glorious conception of the nineteenth century, the
+  Ballyhack railroad. The idea that Buzzardville was to be left off
+  at one side originated in their own fulsome brains--or rather in
+  the settlings which _they_ regard as brains. They had better
+  swallow this lie if they want to save their abandoned reptile
+  carcasses the cowhiding they so richly deserve.
+
+  "That ass, Blossom, of the Higginsville _Thunderbolt and
+  Battle-Cry of Freedom_, is down here again sponging at the Van
+  Buren.
+
+  "We observe that the besotted blackguard of the Mud Springs
+  _Morning Howl_ is giving out, with his usual propensity for
+  lying, that Van Werter is not elected. The heaven-born mission of
+  journalism is to disseminate truth: to eradicate error; to
+  educate, refine, and elevate the tone of public morals and
+  manners, and make all men more gentle, more virtuous, more
+  charitable, and in all ways better, and holier, and happier; and
+  yet this black-hearted scoundrel degrades his great office
+  persistently to the dissemination of falsehood, calumny,
+  vituperation, and vulgarity.
+
+  "Blathersville wants a Nicholson pavement--it wants a jail and a
+  poor-house more. The idea of a pavement in a one-horse town
+  composed of two gin-mills, a blacksmith-shop, and that
+  mustard-plaster of a newspaper, the _Daily Hurrah_! The crawling
+  insect, Buckner, who edits the _Hurrah_, is braying about this
+  business with his customary imbecility, and imagining that he is
+  talking sense."
+
+"Now _that_ is the way to write--peppery and to the point.
+Mush-and-milk journalism gives me the fan-tods."
+
+About this time a brick came through the window with a splintering
+crash, and gave me a considerable of a jolt in the back. I moved
+out of range--I began to feel in the way.
+
+The chief said: "That was the Colonel, likely. I've been expecting
+him for two days. He will be up now right away."
+
+He was correct. The Colonel appeared in the door a moment
+afterwards with a dragoon revolver in his hand.
+
+He said: "Sir, have I the honor of addressing the poltroon who
+edits this mangy sheet?"
+
+"You have. Be seated, sir. Be careful of the chair, one of its legs
+is gone. I believe I have the honor of addressing the putrid liar,
+Colonel Blatherskite Tecumseh?"
+
+"Right, sir. I have a little account to settle with you. If you are
+at leisure we will begin."
+
+"I have an article on the 'Encouraging Progress of Moral and
+Intellectual Development in America' to finish, but there is no
+hurry. Begin."
+
+Both pistols rang out their fierce clamor at the same instant. The
+chief lost a lock of his hair, and the Colonel's bullet ended its
+career in the fleshy part of my thigh. The Colonel's left shoulder
+was clipped a little. They fired again. Both missed their men this
+time, but I got my share, a shot in the arm. At the third fire both
+gentlemen were wounded slightly, and I had a knuckle chipped. I
+then said I believed I would go out and take a walk, as this was a
+private matter, and I had a delicacy about participating in it
+further. But both gentlemen begged me to keep my seat, and assured
+me that I was not in the way.
+
+They then talked about the elections and the crops while they
+reloaded, and I fell to tying up my wounds. But presently they
+opened fire again with animation, and every shot took effect--but
+it is proper to remark that five out of the six fell to my share.
+The sixth one mortally wounded the Colonel, who remarked, with fine
+humor, that he would have to say good-morning now, as he had
+business up-town. He then inquired the way to the undertaker's and
+left.
+
+The chief turned to me and said: "I am expecting company to dinner,
+and shall have to get ready. It will be a favor to me if you will
+read proof and attend to the customers."
+
+I winced a little at the idea of attending to the customers, but I
+was too bewildered by the fusillade that was still ringing in my
+ears to think of anything to say.
+
+He continued: "Jones will be here at three--cowhide him. Gillespie
+will call earlier, perhaps--throw him out of the window. Ferguson
+will be along about four--kill him. That is all for to-day, I
+believe. If you have any odd time, you may write a blistering
+article on the police--give the chief inspector rats. The cowhides
+are under the table; weapons in the drawer--ammunition there in the
+corner--lint and bandages up there in the pigeon-holes. In case of
+accident, go to Lancet, the surgeon, down-stairs. He advertises--we
+take it out in trade."
+
+[Illustration: "GILLESPIE HAD CALLED"]
+
+He was gone. I shuddered. At the end of the next three hours I
+had been through perils so awful that all peace of mind and all
+cheerfulness were gone from me. Gillespie had called and thrown
+_me_ out of the window. Jones arrived promptly, and when I got
+ready to do the cowhiding he took the job off my hands. In an
+encounter with a stranger, not in the bill of fare, I had lost my
+scalp. Another stranger, by the name of Thompson, left me a mere
+wreck and ruin of chaotic rags. And at last, at bay in the corner,
+and beset by an infuriated mob of editors, blacklegs, politicians,
+and desperadoes, who raved and swore and flourished their weapons
+about my head till the air shimmered with glancing flashes of
+steel, I was in the act of resigning my berth on the paper when the
+chief arrived, and with him a rabble of charmed and enthusiastic
+friends. Then ensued a scene of riot and carnage such as no human
+pen, or steel one either, could describe. People were shot, probed,
+dismembered, blown up, thrown out of the window. There was a brief
+tornado of murky blasphemy, with a confused and frantic war-dance
+glimmering through it, and then all was over. In five minutes there
+was silence, and the gory chief and I sat alone and surveyed the
+sanguinary ruin that strewed the floor around us.
+
+He said: "You'll like this place when you get used to it."
+
+I said: "I'll have to get you to excuse me; I think maybe I
+might write to suit you after a while; as soon as I had had some
+practice and learned the language I am confident I could. But, to
+speak the plain truth, that sort of energy of expression has its
+inconveniences, and a man is liable to interruption. You see that
+yourself. Vigorous writing is calculated to elevate the public, no
+doubt, but then I do not like to attract so much attention as it
+calls forth. I can't write with comfort when I am interrupted so
+much as I have been to-day. I like this berth well enough, but I
+don't like to be left here to wait on the customers. The
+experiences are novel, I grant you, and entertaining, too, after a
+fashion, but they are not judiciously distributed. A gentleman
+shoots at you through the window and cripples _me_; a bomb-shell
+comes down the stove-pipe for your gratification and sends the
+stove-door down _my_ throat; a friend drops in to swap compliments
+with you, and freckles _me_ with bullet-holes till my skin won't
+hold my principles; you go to dinner, and Jones comes with his
+cowhide, Gillespie throws me out of the window, Thompson tears all
+my clothes off, and an entire stranger takes my scalp with the easy
+freedom of an old acquaintance; and in less than five minutes all
+the blackguards in the country arrive in their war-paint, and
+proceed to scare the rest of me to death with their tomahawks. Take
+it altogether, I never had such a spirited time in all my life as I
+have had to-day. No; I like you, and I like your calm, unruffled
+way of explaining things to the customers, but you see I am not
+used to it. The Southern heart is too impulsive; Southern
+hospitality is too lavish with the stranger. The paragraphs which I
+have written to-day, and into whose cold sentences your masterly
+hand has infused the fervent spirit of Tennessean journalism, will
+wake up another nest of hornets. All that mob of editors will
+come--and they will come hungry, too, and want somebody for
+breakfast. I shall have to bid you adieu. I decline to be present
+at these festivities. I came South for my health; I will go back on
+the same errand, and suddenly. Tennessean journalism is too
+stirring for me."
+
+After which we parted with mutual regret, and I took apartments at
+the hospital.
+
+
+
+
+Nicodemus Dodge--Printer
+
+
+When I was a boy in a printing-office in Missouri, a
+loose-jointed, long-legged, tow-headed, jeans-clad, countrified cub
+of about sixteen lounged in one day, and without removing his hands
+from the depths of his trousers pockets or taking off his faded
+ruin of a slouch hat, whose broken rim hung limp and ragged about
+his eyes and ears like a bug-eaten cabbage-leaf, stared
+indifferently around, then leaned his hip against the editors'
+table, crossed his mighty brogans, aimed at a distant fly from a
+crevice in his upper teeth, laid him low, and said, with composure:
+
+"Whar's the boss?"
+
+"I am the boss," said the editor, following this curious bit of
+architecture wonderingly along up to its clock-face with his eye.
+
+"Don't want anybody fur to learn the business, 'tain't likely?"
+
+"Well, I don't know. Would you like to learn it?"
+
+"Pap's so po' he cain't run me no mo', so I want to git a show
+somers if I kin, 'tain't no diffunce what--I'm strong and hearty,
+and I don't turn my back on no kind of work, hard nur soft."
+
+"Do you think you would like to learn the printing business?"
+
+"Well, I don't re'ly k'yer a durn what I _do_ learn, so's I git a
+chance fur to make my way. I'd jist as soon learn print'n' 's
+anything."
+
+"Can you read?"
+
+"Yes--middlin'."
+
+"Write?"
+
+"Well, I've seed people could lay over me thar."
+
+"Cipher?"
+
+"Not good enough to keep store, I don't reckon, but up as fur as
+twelve-times-twelve I ain't no slouch. 'Tother side of that is what
+gits me."
+
+"Where is your home?"
+
+"I'm f'm old Shelby."
+
+"What's your father's religious denomination?"
+
+"Him? Oh, he's a blacksmith."
+
+"No, no--I don't mean his trade. What's his _religious_
+denomination?"
+
+"_Oh_--I didn't understand you befo'. He's a Freemason."
+
+"No, no; you don't get my meaning yet. What I mean is, does he
+belong to any _church_?"
+
+"_Now_ you're talkin'! Gouldn't make out what you was
+a-tryin' to git through yo' head no way. B'long to a _church_! Why,
+boss, he's be'n the pizenest kind of a Free-will Babtis' for forty
+year. They ain't no pizener ones 'n' what _he_ is. Mighty good man,
+pap is. Everybody says that. If they said any diffrunt they
+wouldn't say it whar _I_ wuz--not _much_ they wouldn't."
+
+"What is your own religion?"
+
+"Well, boss, you've kind o' got me thar--and yit you hain't got me
+so mighty much, nuther. I think 't if a feller he'ps another feller
+when he's in trouble, and don't cuss, and don't do no mean things,
+nur noth'n' he ain' no business to do, and don't spell the
+Saviour's name with a little g, he ain't runnin' no resks--he's
+about as saift as if he b'longed to a church."
+
+"But suppose he did spell it with a little g--what then?"
+
+"Well, if he done it a-purpose, I reckon he wouldn't stand no
+chance,--he _oughtn't_ to have no chance, anyway, I'm most rotten
+certain 'bout that."
+
+"What is your name?"
+
+"Nicodemus Dodge."
+
+"I think maybe you'll do, Nicodemus. We'll give you a trial,
+anyway."
+
+"All right."
+
+"When would you like to begin?"
+
+"Now."
+
+So, within ten minutes after we had first glimpsed this nondescript
+he was one of us, and with his coat off and hard at it.
+
+Beyond that end of our establishment which was farthest from the
+street was a deserted garden, pathless, and thickly grown with the
+bloomy and villanous "jimpson" weed and its common friend the
+stately sunflower. In the midst of this mournful spot was a decayed
+and aged little "frame" house with but one room, one window, and no
+ceiling--it had been a smoke-house a generation before. Nicodemus
+was given this lonely and ghostly den as a bedchamber.
+
+The village smarties recognized a treasure in Nicodemus right
+away--a butt to play jokes on. It was easy to see that he was
+inconceivably green and confiding. George Jones had the glory of
+perpetrating the first joke on him; he gave him a cigar with a
+fire-cracker in it and winked to the crowd to come; the thing
+exploded presently and swept away the bulk of Nicodemus's eyebrows
+and eyelashes. He simply said:
+
+"I consider them kind of seeg'yars dangersome"--and seemed to
+suspect nothing. The next evening Nicodemus waylaid George and
+poured a bucket of ice-water over him.
+
+One day, while Nicodemus was in swimming, Tom McElroy "tied" his
+clothes. Nicodemus made a bonfire of Tom's by way of retaliation.
+
+A third joke was played upon Nicodemus a day or two later--he
+walked up the middle aisle of the village church, Sunday night,
+with a staring hand-bill pinned between his shoulders. The joker
+spent the remainder of the night, after church, in the cellar of a
+deserted house, and Nicodemus sat on the cellar door till towards
+breakfast-time to make sure that the prisoner remembered that if
+any noise was made some rough treatment would be the consequence.
+The cellar had two feet of stagnant water in it, and was bottomed
+with six inches of soft mud.
+
+But I wander from the point. It was the subject of skeletons that
+brought this boy back to my recollection. Before a very long time
+had elapsed, the village smarties began to feel an uncomfortable
+consciousness of not having made a very shining success out of
+their attempts on the simpleton from "old Shelby." Experimenters
+grew scarce and chary. Now the young doctor came to the rescue.
+There was delight and applause when he proposed to scare Nicodemus
+to death, and explained how he was going to do it. He had a noble
+new skeleton--the skeleton of the late and only local celebrity,
+Jimmy Finn, the village drunkard--a grisly piece of property which
+he had bought of Jimmy Finn himself, at auction, for fifty dollars,
+under great competition, when Jimmy lay very sick in the tanyard a
+fortnight before his death. The fifty dollars had gone promptly for
+whiskey and had considerably hurried up the change of ownership in
+the skeleton. The doctor would put Jimmy Finn's skeleton in
+Nicodemus's bed!
+
+This was done--about half-past ten in the evening. About Nicodemus's
+usual bedtime--midnight--the village jokers came creeping stealthily
+through the jimpson weeds and sunflowers towards the lonely frame
+den. They reached the window and peeped in. There sat the long-legged
+pauper, on his bed, in a very short shirt, and nothing more; he was
+dangling his legs contentedly back and forth, and wheezing the music
+of "Camptown Races" out of a paper-overlaid comb which he was pressing
+against his mouth; by him lay a new jews-harp, a new top, a solid
+india-rubber ball, a handful of painted marbles, five pounds of
+"store" candy, and a well-knawed slab of gingerbread as big and as
+thick as a volume of sheet music. He had sold the skeleton to a
+travelling quack for three dollars and was enjoying the result!
+
+[Illustration: "WHEEZING THE MUSIC OF 'CAMPTOWN RACES'"]
+
+
+
+
+Mr. Bloke's Item
+
+
+Our esteemed friend, Mr. John William Bloke, of Virginia City,
+walked into the office where we are sub-editor at a late hour last
+night, with an expression of profound and heartfelt suffering upon
+his countenance, and, sighing heavily, laid the following item
+reverently upon the desk, and walked slowly out again. He paused a
+moment at the door, and seemed struggling to command his feelings
+sufficiently to enable him to speak, and then, nodding his head
+towards his manuscript, ejaculated in a broken voice, "Friend of
+mine--oh! how sad!" and burst into tears. We were so moved at his
+distress that we did not think to call him back and endeavor to
+comfort him until he was gone, and it was too late. The paper had
+already gone to press, but knowing that our friend would consider
+the publication of this item important, and cherishing the hope
+that to print it would afford a melancholy satisfaction to his
+sorrowing heart, we stopped the press at once and inserted it in
+our columns:
+
+  DISTRESSING ACCIDENT.--Last evening, about six o'clock, as Mr.
+  William Schuyler, an old and respectable citizen of South Park,
+  was leaving his residence to go down-town, as has been his usual
+  custom for many years with the exception only of a short interval
+  in the spring of 1850, during which he was confined to his bed by
+  injuries received in attempting to stop a runaway horse by
+  thoughtlessly placing himself directly in its wake and throwing
+  up his hands and shouting, which, if he had done so even a single
+  moment sooner, must inevitably have frightened the animal still
+  more instead of checking its speed, although disastrous enough to
+  himself as it was, and rendered more melancholy and distressing
+  by reason of the presence of his wife's mother, who was there and
+  saw the sad occurrence, notwithstanding it is at least likely,
+  though not necessarily so, that she should be reconnoitring in
+  another direction when incidents occur, not being vivacious and
+  on the lookout, as a general thing, but even the reverse, as her
+  own mother is said to have stated, who is no more, but died in
+  the full hope of a glorious resurrection, upward of three years
+  ago, aged eighty-six, being a Christian woman and without guile,
+  as it were, or property, in consequence of the fire of 1849,
+  which destroyed every single thing she had in the world. But such
+  is life. Let us all take warning by this solemn occurrence, and
+  let us endeavor so to conduct ourselves that when we come to die
+  we can do it. Let us place our hands upon our heart, and say with
+  earnestness and sincerity that from this day forth we will beware
+  of the intoxicating bowl.--_First edition of the Californian._
+
+The head editor has been in here raising the mischief, and tearing
+his hair and kicking the furniture about, and abusing me like a
+pickpocket. He says that every time he leaves me in charge of the
+paper for half an hour, I get imposed upon by the first infant or
+the first idiot that comes along. And he says that that distressing
+item of Mr. Bloke's is nothing but a lot of distressing bosh, and
+has no point to it, and no sense in it, and no information in it,
+and that there was no sort of necessity for stopping the press to
+publish it.
+
+Now all this comes of being good-hearted. If I had been as
+unaccommodating and unsympathetic as some people, I would have told
+Mr. Bloke that I wouldn't receive his communication at such a late
+hour; but no, his snuffling distress touched my heart, and I jumped
+at the chance of doing something to modify his misery. I never read
+his item to see whether there was anything wrong about it, but
+hastily wrote the few lines which preceded it, and sent it to the
+printers. And what has my kindness done for me? It has done nothing
+but bring down upon me a storm of abuse and ornamental blasphemy.
+
+Now I will read that item myself, and see if there is any
+foundation for all this fuss. And if there is, the author of it
+shall hear from me.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have read it, and I am bound to admit that it seems a little
+mixed at a first glance. However, I will peruse it once more.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have read it again, and it does really seem a good deal more
+mixed than ever.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have read it over five times, but if I can get at the meaning of
+it, I wish I may get my just deserts. It won't bear analysis. There
+are things about it which I cannot understand at all. It don't say
+what ever became of William Schuyler. It just says enough about him
+to get one interested in his career, and then drops him. Who is
+William Schuyler, anyhow, and what part of South Park did he live in,
+and if he started down-town at six o'clock, did he ever get there,
+and if he did, did anything happen to him? Is _he_ the individual
+that met with the "distressing accident"? Considering the elaborate
+circumstantiality of detail observable in the item, it seems to me
+that it ought to contain more information than it does. On the
+contrary, it is obscure--and not only obscure, but utterly
+incomprehensible. Was the breaking of Mr. Schuyler's leg, fifteen
+years ago, the "distressing accident" that plunged Mr. Bloke into
+unspeakable grief, and caused him to come up here at dead of night
+and stop our press to acquaint the world with the circumstance? Or
+did the "distressing accident" consist in the destruction of
+Schuyler's mother-in-law's property in early times? Or did it consist
+in the death of that person herself three years ago (albeit it does
+not appear that she died by accident)? In a word, what _did_ that
+"distressing accident" consist in? What did that drivelling ass of a
+Schuyler stand _in the wake_ of a runaway horse for, with his
+shouting and gesticulating, if he wanted to stop him? And how the
+mischief could he get run over by a horse that had already passed
+beyond him? And what are we to take "warning" by? And how is this
+extraordinary chapter of incomprehensibilities going to be a "lesson"
+to us? And, above all, what has the intoxicating "bowl" got to do
+with it, anyhow? It is not stated that Schuyler drank, or that his
+wife drank, or that his mother-in-law drank, or that the horse
+drank--wherefore, then, the reference to the intoxicating bowl? It
+does seem to me that if Mr. Bloke had let the intoxicating bowl alone
+himself, he never would have got into so much trouble about this
+exasperating imaginary accident. I have read this absurd item over
+and over again, with all its insinuating plausibility, until my head
+swims, but I can make neither head nor tail of it. There certainly
+seems to have been an accident of some kind or other, but it is
+impossible to determine what the nature of it was, or who was the
+sufferer by it. I do not like to do it, but I feel compelled to
+request that the next time anything happens to one of Mr. Bloke's
+friends, he will append such explanatory notes to his account of it
+as will enable me to find out what sort of an accident it was and whom
+it happened to. I had rather all his friends should die than that I
+should be driven to the verge of lunacy again in trying to cipher out
+the meaning of another such production as the above.
+
+[Illustration: "I HAVE READ THIS ABSURD ITEM OVER"]
+
+
+
+
+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 office, towards sundown,
+a group of men and boys at the foot of the stairs dispersed with
+one impulse, and gave me passageway, 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 township alone by being pulled in a
+half-ripe condition, when, if they had sent a 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 towards 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."
+
+[Illustration: "A LONG CADAVEROUS CREATURE"]
+
+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
+  corn-stalks 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 towards 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 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 polecat 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 to take another holiday. Oh! why didn't you _tell_
+me you didn't know anything 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 warwhoop 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 campfire 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 a 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 poor-house. _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 watermelon-tree from a peach-vine to
+save his life. _You_ are the loser by this rupture, not me,
+Pie-plant. Adios."
+
+I then left.
+
+
+
+
+The Killing of Julius Cæsar "Localized"
+
+    _Being the only true and reliable account ever published; taken from
+    the "Roman Daily Evening Fasces," of the date of that tremendous
+    occurrence._
+
+
+Nothing in the world affords a newspaper reporter so much
+satisfaction as gathering up the details of a bloody and mysterious
+murder, and writing them up with aggravating circumstantiality. He
+takes a living delight in this labor of love--for such it is to
+him, especially if he knows that all the other papers have gone to
+press, and his will be the only one that will contain the dreadful
+intelligence. A feeling of regret has often come over me that I was
+not reporting in Rome when Cæsar was killed--reporting on an
+evening paper, and the only one in the city, and getting at least
+twelve hours ahead of the morning-paper boys with this most
+magnificent "item" that ever fell to the lot of the craft. Other
+events have happened as startling as this, but none that possessed
+so peculiarly all the characteristics of the favorite "item" of the
+present day, magnified into grandeur and sublimity by the high
+rank, fame, and social and political standing of the actors in it.
+
+However, as I was not permitted to report Cæsar's assassination in
+the regular way, it has at least afforded me rare satisfaction to
+translate the following able account of it from the original Latin
+of the _Roman Daily Evening Fasces_ of that date--second edition.
+
+  "Our usually quiet city of Rome was thrown into a state of wild
+  excitement yesterday by the occurrence of one of those bloody
+  affrays which sicken the heart and fill the soul with fear, while
+  they inspire all thinking men with forebodings for the future of
+  a city where human life is held so cheaply, and the gravest laws
+  are so openly set at defiance. As the result of that affray, it
+  is our painful duty, as public journalists, to record the death
+  of one of our most esteemed citizens--a man whose name is known
+  wherever this paper circulates, and whose fame it has been our
+  pleasure and our privilege to extend, and also to protect from
+  the tongue of slander and falsehood, to the best of our poor
+  ability. We refer to Mr. J. Cæsar, the Emperor-elect.
+
+  "The facts of the case, as nearly as our reporter could
+  determine them from the conflicting statements of eyewitnesses,
+  were about as follows:--The affair was an election row, of
+  course. Nine-tenths of the ghastly butcheries that disgrace the
+  city nowadays grow out of the bickerings and jealousies and
+  animosities engendered by these accursed elections. Rome would be
+  the gainer by it if her very constables were elected to serve a
+  century; for in our experience we have never even been able to
+  choose a dog-pelter without celebrating the event with a dozen
+  knockdowns and a general cramming of the station-house with
+  drunken vagabonds overnight. It is said that when the immense
+  majority for Cæsar at the polls in the market was declared the
+  other day, and the crown was offered to that gentleman, even his
+  amazing unselfishness in refusing it three times was not
+  sufficient to save him from the whispered insults of such men as
+  Casca, of the Tenth Ward, and other hirelings of the disappointed
+  candidate, hailing mostly from the Eleventh and Thirteenth and
+  other outside districts, who were overheard speaking ironically
+  and contemptuously of Mr. Cæsar's conduct upon that occasion.
+
+  "We are further informed that there are many among us who think
+  they are justified in believing that the assassination of Julius
+  Cæsar was a put-up thing--a cut-and-dried arrangement, hatched by
+  Marcus Brutus and a lot of his hired roughs, and carried out only
+  too faithfully according to the programme. Whether there be good
+  grounds for this suspicion or not, we leave to the people to
+  judge for themselves, only asking that they will read the
+  following account of the sad occurrence carefully and
+  dispassionately before they render that judgment.
+
+  "The Senate was already in session, and Cæsar was coming down
+  the street towards the Capitol, conversing with some personal
+  friends, and followed, as usual, by a large number of citizens.
+  Just as he was passing in front of Demosthenes & Thucydides'
+  drug-store, he was observing casually to a gentleman, who, our
+  informant thinks, is a fortune-teller, that the Ides of March
+  were come. The reply was, 'Yes, they are come, but not gone yet.'
+  At this moment Artemidorus stepped up and passed the time of day,
+  and asked Cæsar to read a schedule or a tract or something of the
+  kind, which he had brought for his perusal. Mr. Decius Brutus
+  also said something about an 'humble suit' which _he_ wanted
+  read. Artemidorus begged that attention might be paid to his
+  first, because it was of personal consequence to Cæsar. The
+  latter replied that what concerned himself should be read last,
+  or words to that effect. Artemidorus begged and beseeched him to
+  read the paper instantly.[1] However, Cæsar shook him off, and
+  refused to read any petition in the street. He then entered the
+  Capitol, and the crowd followed him.
+
+  "About this time the following conversation was overheard, and we
+  consider that, taken in connection with the events which
+  succeeded it, it bears an appalling significance: Mr. Papilius
+  Lena remarked to George W. Cassius (commonly known as the 'Nobby
+  Boy of the Third Ward'), a bruiser in the pay of the Opposition,
+  that he hoped his enterprise to-day might thrive; and when
+  Cassius asked, 'What enterprise?' he only closed his left eye
+  temporarily and said with simulated indifference, 'Fare you
+  well,' and sauntered towards Cæsar. Marcus Brutus, who is
+  suspected of being the ringleader of the band that killed Cæsar,
+  asked what it was that Lena had said. Cassius told him, and
+  added, in a low tone, '_I fear our purpose is discovered._'
+
+  "Brutus told his wretched accomplice to keep an eye on Lena,
+  and a moment after Cassius urged that lean and hungry vagrant,
+  Casca, whose reputation here is none of the best, to be sudden
+  for _he feared prevention_. He then turned to Brutus, apparently
+  much excited, and asked what should be done, and swore that
+  either he or Cæsar _should never turn back_--he would kill
+  himself first. At this time Cæsar was talking to some of the
+  back-country members about the approaching fall elections, and
+  paying little attention to what was going on around him. Billy
+  Trebonius got into conversation with the people's friend and
+  Cæsar's--Mark Antony--and under some pretence or other got him
+  away, and Brutus, Decius, Casca, Cinna, Metellus Cimber, and
+  others of the gang of infamous desperadoes that infest Rome at
+  present, closed around the doomed Cæsar. Then Metellus Cimber
+  knelt down and begged that his brother might be recalled from
+  banishment, but Cæsar rebuked him for his fawning conduct, and
+  refused to grant his petition. Immediately, at Cimber's request,
+  first Brutus and then Cassius begged for the return of the
+  banished Publius; but Cæsar still refused. He said he could not
+  be moved; that he was as fixed as the North Star, and proceeded
+  to speak in the most complimentary terms of the firmness of that
+  star and its steady character. Then he said he was like it, and
+  he believed he was the only man in the country that was;
+  therefore, since he was 'constant' that Cimber should be
+  banished, he was also 'constant' that he should stay banished,
+  and he'd be hanged if he didn't keep him so!
+
+  "Instantly seizing upon this shallow pretext for a fight,
+  Casca sprang at Cæsar and struck him with a dirk. Cæsar grabbing
+  him by the arm with his right hand, and launching a blow straight
+  from the shoulder with his left that sent the reptile bleeding to
+  the earth. He then backed up against Pompey's statue, and squared
+  himself to receive his assailants. Cassius and Cimber and Cinna
+  rushed upon him with their daggers drawn, and the former
+  succeeded in inflicting a wound upon his body; but before he
+  could strike again, and before either of the others could strike
+  at all, Cæsar stretched the three miscreants at his feet with as
+  many blows of his powerful fist. By this time the Senate was in
+  an indescribable uproar; the throng of citizens in the lobbies
+  had blockaded the doors in their frantic efforts to escape from
+  the building, the sergeant-at-arms and his assistants were
+  struggling with the assassins, venerable senators had cast aside
+  their encumbering robes, and were leaping over benches and flying
+  down the aisles in wild confusion towards the shelter of the
+  committee-rooms, and a thousand voices were shouting 'Po-lice!
+  Po-lice!' in discordant tones that rose above the frightful din
+  like shrieking winds above the roaring of a tempest. And amid it
+  all, great Cæsar stood with his back against the statue, like a
+  lion at bay, and fought his assailants weaponless and hand to
+  hand, with the defiant bearing and the unwavering courage which
+  he had shown before on many a bloody field. Billy Trebonius and
+  Caius Legarius struck him with their daggers and fell, as their
+  brother-conspirators before them had fallen. But at last, when
+  Cæsar saw his old friend Brutus step forward armed with a
+  murderous knife, it is said he seemed utterly overpowered with
+  grief and amazement, and dropping his invincible left arm by his
+  side, he hid his face in the folds of his mantle and received the
+  treacherous blow without an effort to stay the hand that gave it.
+  He only said, '_Et tu, Brute?_' and fell lifeless on the marble
+  pavement.
+
+  "We learn that the coat deceased had on when he was killed was
+  the same one he wore in his tent on the afternoon of the day he
+  overcame the Nervii, and that when it was removed from the corpse
+  it was found to be cut and gashed in no less than seven different
+  places. There was nothing in the pockets. It will be exhibited at
+  the coroner's inquest, and will be damning proof of the fact of
+  the killing. These latter facts may be relied on, as we get them
+  from Mark Antony, whose position enables him to learn every item
+  of news connected with the one subject of absorbing interest of
+  to-day.
+
+  [Illustration: "THERE WAS NOTHING IN THE POCKETS"]
+
+  "LATER.--While the coroner was summoning a jury, Mark Antony and
+  other friends of the late Cæsar got hold of the body, and lugged
+  it off to the Forum, and at last accounts Antony and Brutus were
+  making speeches over it and raising such a row among the people
+  that, as we go to press, the chief of police is satisfied there
+  is going to be a riot, and is taking measures accordingly."
+
+
+[Footnote 1: Mark that: It is hinted by William Shakespeare, who
+saw the beginning and the end of the unfortunate affray, that this
+"schedule" was simply a note discovering to Cæsar that a plot was
+brewing to take his life.]
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Editorial Wild Oats, by Mark Twain
+
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Editorial Wild Oats, by Mark Twain
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Editorial Wild Oats
+
+Author: Mark Twain
+
+Release Date: October 6, 2006 [EBook #19484]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EDITORIAL WILD OATS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzan Flanagan and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+
+<h1>Editorial Wild Oats</h1>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+<h5>BY</h5>
+
+<h2>Mark Twain</h2>
+
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+
+<h4>ILLUSTRATED</h4>
+
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+
+<h4>NEW YORK AND LONDON<br />
+HARPER &amp; BROTHERS<br />
+PUBLISHERS&mdash;MCMV</h4>
+
+
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+<table border="1" cellpadding="5" summary="Copyright">
+<tr><td align="center">
+Copyright, 1875, 1899, 1903, by <span class="smcap">Samuel L. Clemens</span>.<br />
+Copyright, 1879, 1899, by <span class="smcap">Samuel L. Clemens</span>.
+<br />
+Copyright, 1905, by <span class="smcap">Harper &amp; Brothers</span>.
+<br />
+<i>All rights reserved.</i>
+<br />
+Published September, 1905.</td></tr></table>
+
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 135px;">
+<a href="images/ill005.jpg" name="I_FANCIED" id="I_FANCIED">
+<img src="images/ill005tn.jpg" width="135" height="200" class="plain" alt="See p. 57 -- &quot;I FANCIED HE WAS DISPLEASED&quot;" title="See p. 57 -- &quot;I FANCIED HE WAS DISPLEASED&quot;" />
+</a><span class="caption">See p. 57 <br /> &quot;I FANCIED <br />HE WAS DISPLEASED&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="CONTENTS" class="toc">
+
+<tr>
+    <td align='left'></td>
+    <td align='right'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;PAGE</td></tr>
+<tr>
+    <td align='left'><a href='#My_First_Literary_Venture'/><span class="smcap">My First Literary Venture</span></td>
+    <td align='right'><a href="#Page_3"/>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;3</td></tr>
+<tr>
+    <td align='left'><a href='#Journalism_in_Tennessee'/><span class="smcap">Journalism in Tennessee</span></td>
+    <td align='right'><a href="#Page_11"/>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;11</td></tr>
+<tr>
+    <td align='left'><a href='#Nicodemus_Dodge'/><span class="smcap">Nicodemus Dodge&mdash;Printer</span></td>
+    <td align='right'><a href="#Page_30"/>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;30</td></tr>
+<tr>
+    <td align='left'><a href='#Mr_Blokes_Item'/><span class="smcap">Mr. Bloke's Item</span></td>
+    <td align='right'><a href="#Page_41"/>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;41</td></tr>
+<tr>
+    <td align='left'><a href='#How_I_Edited'/><span class="smcap">How I Edited an Agricultural Paper</span></td>
+    <td align='right'><a href="#Page_52"/>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;52</td></tr>
+<tr>
+    <td align='left'><a href='#The_Killing_of_Julius'/><span class="smcap">The Killing of Julius C&aelig;sar "Localized"</span></td>
+    <td align='right'><a href="#Page_70"/>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;70</td></tr>
+
+</table>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>Illustrations</h2>
+<div><br /></div>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="CONTENTS" class="toc">
+
+<tr>
+    <td align='left'><a href='#I_FANCIED'/>"I FANCIED HE WAS DISPLEASED"</td><td></td>
+    <td align='right'><a href="#I_FANCIED"/>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Frontispiece</i></td></tr>
+<tr>
+    <td align='left'><a href='#HE_HAD_CONCLUDED'/>"HE HAD CONCLUDED HE WOULDN'T"</td>
+    <td align='right'><i>Facing p.</i></td>
+    <td align='right'><a href="#Page_4"/>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;4</td></tr>
+<tr>
+    <td align='left'><a href='#GILLESPIE_HAD_CALLED'/>"GILLESPIE HAD CALLED"</td>
+    <td align='right'><i>"</i></td>
+    <td align='right'><a href="#Page_24"/>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;24</td></tr>
+<tr>
+    <td align='left'><a href='#WHEEZING_THE_MUSIC'/>"WHEEZING THE MUSIC OF 'CAMPTOWN RACES'"</td>
+    <td align='right'><i>"</i></td>
+    <td align='right'><a href="#Page_38"/>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;38</td></tr>
+<tr>
+    <td align='left'><a href='#I_HAVE_READ'/>"I HAVE READ THIS ABSURD ITEM OVER"</td>
+    <td align='right'><i>"</i></td>
+    <td align='right'><a href="#Page_50"/>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;50</td></tr>
+<tr>
+    <td align='left'><a href='#A_LONG_CADAVEROUS'/>"A LONG CADAVEROUS CREATURE"</td>
+    <td align='right'><i>"</i></td>
+    <td align='right'><a href="#Page_58"/>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;58</td></tr>
+<tr>
+    <td align='left'><a href='#THERE_WAS_NOTHING'/>"THERE WAS NOTHING IN THE POCKETS"</td>
+    <td align='right'><i>"</i></td>
+    <td align='right'><a href="#Page_82"/>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;82</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h5>Transcribers Note: The dialect in this book is transcribed exactly as in
+the original.</h5>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h1>Editorial Wild Oats</h1>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><div><br /></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3" href="#Page_3">[Pg&nbsp;3]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="My_First_Literary_Venture" id="My_First_Literary_Venture"></a>My First Literary Venture</h2>
+
+
+<p>I was a very smart child
+at the age of thirteen&mdash;an
+unusually smart child,
+I thought at the time.
+It was then that I did my first newspaper
+scribbling, and most unexpectedly
+to me it stirred up a fine sensation
+in the community. It did,
+indeed, and I was very proud of it,
+too. I was a printer's "devil," and a
+progressive and aspiring one. My
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4" href="#Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>
+uncle had me on his paper (the <i>Weekly
+Hannibal Journal</i>, two dollars a year,
+in advance&mdash;five hundred subscribers,
+and they paid in cord-wood, cabbages,
+and unmarketable turnips), and on a
+lucky summer's day he left town to
+be gone a week, and asked me if I
+thought I could edit one issue of the
+paper judiciously. Ah! didn't I want
+to try! Higgins was the editor on
+the rival paper. He had lately been
+jilted, and one night a friend found an
+open note on the poor fellow's bed, in
+which he stated that he could no
+longer endure life and had drowned
+himself in Bear Creek. The friend
+ran down there and discovered Higgins
+wading back to shore. He had
+concluded he wouldn't. The village
+was full of it for several days, but
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5" href="#Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>
+Higgins did not suspect it. I thought
+this was a fine opportunity. I wrote
+an elaborately wretched account of
+the whole matter, and then illustrated
+it with villanous cuts engraved on
+the bottoms of wooden type with a
+jack-knife&mdash;one of them a picture of
+Higgins wading out into the creek in
+his shirt, with a lantern, sounding the
+depth of the water with a walking-stick.
+I thought it was desperately
+funny, and was densely unconscious
+that there was any moral obliquity
+about such a publication. Being
+satisfied with this effort, I looked
+around for other worlds to conquer,
+and it struck me that it would
+make good, interesting matter to
+charge the editor of a neighboring
+country paper with a piece of
+gratuitous rascality and "see him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6" href="#Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>
+squirm."</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 125px;">
+<a href="images/ill014.jpg" name="HE_HAD_CONCLUDED" id="HE_HAD_CONCLUDED">
+<img src="images/ill014tn.jpg" width="125" height="200" class="plain" alt="&quot;HE HAD CONCLUDED HE WOULDN&#39;T&quot;" title="&quot;HE HAD CONCLUDED HE WOULDN&#39;T&quot;" />
+</a><span class="caption">&quot;HE HAD CONCLUDED HE WOULDN&#39;T&quot;</span>
+</div>
+<!--image should face page 4-->
+
+<p>I did it, putting the article into the
+form of a parody on the "Burial of
+Sir John Moore"&mdash;and a pretty crude
+parody it was, too.</p>
+
+<p>Then I lampooned two prominent
+citizens outrageously&mdash;not because
+they had done anything to deserve
+it, but merely because I thought it
+was my duty to make the paper
+lively.</p>
+
+<p>Next I gently touched up the
+newest stranger&mdash;the lion of the
+day, the gorgeous journeyman tailor
+from Quincy. He was a simpering
+coxcomb of the first water, and the
+"loudest" dressed man in the State.
+He was an inveterate woman-killer.
+Every week he wrote lushy "poetry"
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7" href="#Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>
+for the <i>Journal</i>, about his newest
+conquest. His rhymes for my week
+were headed, "<span class="smcap">To Mary in H&mdash;l</span>,"
+meaning to Mary in Hannibal, of
+course. But while setting up the
+piece I was suddenly riven from
+head to heel by what I regarded as
+a perfect thunderbolt of humor, and
+I compressed it into a snappy footnote
+at the bottom&mdash;thus:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"We will let this thing pass, just this
+once; but we wish Mr. J. Gordon Runnels
+to understand distinctly that we
+have a character to sustain, and from
+this time forth when he wants to commune
+with his friends in h&mdash;l, he must
+select some other medium than the columns
+of this journal!"</p></div>
+
+<p>The paper came out, and I never
+knew any little thing attract so much
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8" href="#Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>
+attention as those playful trifles of
+mine.</p>
+
+<p>For once the <i>Hannibal Journal</i>
+was in demand&mdash;a novelty it had
+not experienced before. The whole
+town was stirred. Higgins dropped
+in with a double-barrelled shot-gun
+early in the forenoon. When he
+found that it was an infant (as he
+called me) that had done him the
+damage, he simply pulled my ears
+and went away; but he threw up his
+situation that night and left town
+for good. The tailor came with his
+goose and a pair of shears; but he
+despised me, too, and departed for
+the South that night. The two
+lampooned citizens came with threats
+of libel, and went away incensed at
+my insignificance. The country editor
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9" href="#Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>
+pranced in with a warwhoop
+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. My uncle was very
+angry when he got back&mdash;unreasonably
+so, I thought, considering what
+an impetus I had given the paper,
+and considering also that gratitude
+for his preservation ought to have
+been uppermost in his mind, inasmuch
+as by his delay he had so
+wonderfully escaped dissection, tomahawking,
+libel, and getting his head
+shot off. But he softened when he
+looked at the accounts and saw that
+I had actually booked the unparalleled
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10" href="#Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>
+number of thirty-three new
+subscribers, and had the vegetables
+to show for it&mdash;cord-wood, cabbage,
+beans, and unsalable turnips enough
+to run the family for two years!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><div><br /></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11" href="#Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="Journalism_in_Tennessee" id="Journalism_in_Tennessee"></a>Journalism in Tennessee</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p>The editor of the Memphis <i>Avalanche</i>
+swoops thus mildly down upon a correspondent
+who posted him as a Radical: "While
+he was writing the first word, the middle,
+dotting his i's, crossing his t's, and punching
+his period, he knew he was concocting a
+sentence that was saturated with infamy
+and reeking with falsehood."&mdash;<i>Exchange</i>.</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<p>I was told by the physician
+that a Southern climate
+would improve my
+health, and so I went
+down to Tennessee and got a berth
+on the <i>Morning-Glory and Johnson
+County Warwhoop</i> as associate editor.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12" href="#Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>
+When I went on duty I found
+the chief editor sitting tilted back
+in a three-legged chair with his feet
+on a pine table. There was another
+pine table in the room and another
+afflicted chair, and both were half
+buried under newspapers and scraps
+and sheets of manuscript. There
+was a wooden box of sand, sprinkled
+with cigar-stubs and "old soldiers,"
+and a stove with a door hanging by
+its upper hinge. The chief editor
+had a long-tailed black cloth frock-coat
+on, and white linen pants. His
+boots were small and neatly blacked.
+He wore a ruffled shirt, a large seal
+ring, a standing collar of obsolete
+pattern, and a checkered neckerchief
+with the ends hanging down.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13" href="#Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>
+Date of costume about 1848. He
+was smoking a cigar, and trying to
+think of a word, and in pawing his
+hair he had rumpled his locks a
+good deal. He was scowling fearfully,
+and I judged that he was
+concocting a particularly knotty editorial.
+He told me to take the exchanges
+and skim through them
+and write up the "Spirit of the
+Tennessee Press," condensing into
+the article all of their contents that
+seemed of interest.</p>
+
+<p>I wrote as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"SPIRIT OF THE TENNESSEE PRESS</p>
+
+<p>"The editors of the <i>Semi-Weekly
+Earthquake</i> evidently labor under a
+misapprehension with regard to the
+Ballyhack railroad. It is not the object
+of the company to leave Buzzardville
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14" href="#Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>
+off to one side. On the contrary,
+they consider it one of the most important
+points along the line, and
+consequently can have no desire to
+slight it. The gentlemen of the <i>Earthquake</i>
+will, of course, take pleasure in
+making the correction.</p>
+
+<p>"John W. Blossom, Esq., the able
+editor of the Higginsville <i>Thunderbolt
+and Battle-Cry of Freedom</i>, arrived in
+the city yesterday. He is stopping at
+the Van Buren House.</p>
+
+<p>"We observe that our contemporary
+of the Mud Springs <i>Morning Howl</i> has
+fallen into the error of supposing that
+the election of Van Werter is not an
+established fact, but he will have discovered
+his mistake before this reminder
+reaches him, no doubt. He was doubtless
+misled by incomplete election returns.</p>
+
+<p>"It is pleasant to note that the city
+of Blathersville is endeavoring to contract
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15" href="#Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>
+with some New York gentlemen
+to pave its wellnigh impassable streets
+with the Nicholson pavement. The
+<i>Daily Hurrah</i> urges the measure with
+ability, and seems confident of ultimate
+success."</p></div>
+
+<p>I passed my manuscript over to
+the chief editor for acceptance, alteration,
+or destruction. He glanced
+at it and his face clouded. He ran
+his eye down the pages, and his
+countenance grew portentous. It was
+easy to see that something was wrong.
+Presently he sprang up and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Thunder and lightning! Do you
+suppose I am going to speak of those
+cattle that way? Do you suppose
+my subscribers are going to stand
+such gruel as that? Give me the
+pen!"</p>
+
+<p>I never saw a pen scrape and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16" href="#Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>
+scratch its way so viciously, or plough
+through another man's verbs and
+adjectives so relentlessly. While he
+was in the midst of his work, somebody
+shot at him through the open
+window, and marred the symmetry
+of my ear.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah," said he, "that is that scoundrel
+Smith, of the <i>Moral Volcano</i>&mdash;he
+was due yesterday." And he
+snatched a navy revolver from his
+belt and fired. Smith dropped, shot
+in the thigh. The shot spoiled
+Smith's aim, who was just taking a
+second chance, and he crippled a
+stranger. It was me. Merely a finger
+shot off.</p>
+
+<p>Then the chief editor went on with
+his erasures and interlineations. Just
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17" href="#Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>
+as he finished them a hand-grenade
+came down the stove-pipe, and the
+explosion shivered the stove into a
+thousand fragments. However, it
+did no further damage, except that a
+vagrant piece knocked a couple of
+my teeth out.</p>
+
+<p>"That stove is utterly ruined,"
+said the chief editor.</p>
+
+<p>I said I believed it was.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, no matter&mdash;don't want it
+this kind of weather. I know the
+man that did it. I'll get him. Now,
+<i>here</i> is the way this stuff ought to be
+written."</p>
+
+<p>I took the manuscript. It was
+scarred with erasures and interlineations
+till its mother wouldn't
+have known it if it had had one.
+It now read as follows:
+</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"SPIRIT OF THE TENNESSEE PRESS
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18" href="#Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>"The inveterate liars of the <i>Semi-Weekly
+Earthquake</i> are evidently endeavoring
+to palm off upon a noble and
+chivalrous people another of their vile
+and brutal falsehoods with regard to
+that most glorious conception of the
+nineteenth century, the Ballyhack railroad.
+The idea that Buzzardville was
+to be left off at one side originated in
+their own fulsome brains&mdash;or rather
+in the settlings which <i>they</i> regard as
+brains. They had better swallow this
+lie if they want to save their abandoned
+reptile carcasses the cowhiding they
+so richly deserve.</p>
+
+<p>"That ass, Blossom, of the Higginsville
+<i>Thunderbolt and Battle-Cry of Freedom</i>,
+is down here again sponging at the
+Van Buren.</p>
+
+<p>"We observe that the besotted blackguard
+of the Mud Springs <i>Morning Howl</i>
+is giving out, with his usual propensity
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19" href="#Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>
+for lying, that Van Werter is not elected.
+The heaven-born mission of journalism
+is to disseminate truth: to eradicate
+error; to educate, refine, and elevate
+the tone of public morals and manners,
+and make all men more gentle, more
+virtuous, more charitable, and in all
+ways better, and holier, and happier;
+and yet this black-hearted scoundrel
+degrades his great office persistently
+to the dissemination of falsehood, calumny,
+vituperation, and vulgarity.</p>
+
+<p>"Blathersville wants a Nicholson
+pavement&mdash;it wants a jail and a poor-house
+more. The idea of a pavement
+in a one-horse town composed of two
+gin-mills, a blacksmith-shop, and that
+mustard-plaster of a newspaper, the
+<i>Daily Hurrah</i>! The crawling insect,
+Buckner, who edits the <i>Hurrah</i>, is
+braying about this business with his
+customary imbecility, and imagining
+that he is talking sense."</p></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20" href="#Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Now <i>that</i> is the way to write&mdash;peppery
+and to the point. Mush-and-milk
+journalism gives me the
+fan-tods."</p>
+
+<p>About this time a brick came
+through the window with a splintering
+crash, and gave me a considerable
+of a jolt in the back. I moved out
+of range&mdash;I began to feel in the way.</p>
+
+<p>The chief said: "That was the
+Colonel, likely. I've been expecting
+him for two days. He will be up
+now right away."</p>
+
+<p>He was correct. The Colonel appeared
+in the door a moment afterwards
+with a dragoon revolver in
+his hand.</p>
+
+<p>He said: "Sir, have I the honor of
+addressing the poltroon who edits
+this mangy sheet?"
+</p>
+
+<p>"You have. Be seated, sir. Be
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21" href="#Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>
+careful of the chair, one of its legs
+is gone. I believe I have the honor
+of addressing the putrid liar, Colonel
+Blatherskite Tecumseh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Right, sir. I have a little account
+to settle with you. If you
+are at leisure we will begin."</p>
+
+<p>"I have an article on the 'Encouraging
+Progress of Moral and Intellectual
+Development in America'
+to finish, but there is no hurry.
+Begin."</p>
+
+<p>Both pistols rang out their fierce
+clamor at the same instant. The
+chief lost a lock of his hair, and the
+Colonel's bullet ended its career in
+the fleshy part of my thigh. The
+Colonel's left shoulder was clipped
+a little. They fired again. Both
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22" href="#Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>
+missed their men this time, but I got
+my share, a shot in the arm. At the
+third fire both gentlemen were wounded
+slightly, and I had a knuckle
+chipped. I then said I believed I
+would go out and take a walk, as this
+was a private matter, and I had a
+delicacy about participating in it
+further. But both gentlemen begged
+me to keep my seat, and assured
+me that I was not in the way.</p>
+
+<p>They then talked about the elections
+and the crops while they reloaded,
+and I fell to tying up my
+wounds. But presently they opened
+fire again with animation, and every
+shot took effect&mdash;but it is proper to
+remark that five out of the six fell
+to my share. The sixth one mortally
+wounded the Colonel, who remarked,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23" href="#Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>
+with fine humor, that he would have
+to say good-morning now, as he had
+business up-town. He then inquired
+the way to the undertaker's and left.</p>
+
+<p>The chief turned to me and said:
+"I am expecting company to dinner,
+and shall have to get ready. It will
+be a favor to me if you will read
+proof and attend to the customers."</p>
+
+<p>I winced a little at the idea of attending
+to the customers, but I was
+too bewildered by the fusillade that
+was still ringing in my ears to think
+of anything to say.</p>
+
+<p>He continued: "Jones will be here
+at three&mdash;cowhide him. Gillespie will
+call earlier, perhaps&mdash;throw him out
+of the window. Ferguson will be
+along about four&mdash;kill him. That
+is all for to-day, I believe. If you
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24" href="#Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>
+have any odd time, you may write a
+blistering article on the police&mdash;give
+the chief inspector rats. The cowhides
+are under the table; weapons
+in the drawer&mdash;ammunition there in
+the corner&mdash;lint and bandages up
+there in the pigeon-holes. In case
+of accident, go to Lancet, the surgeon,
+down-stairs. He advertises&mdash;we
+take it out in trade."</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 125px;">
+<a href="images/ill036.jpg" name="GILLESPIE_HAD_CALLED" id="GILLESPIE_HAD_CALLED">
+<img src="images/ill036tn.jpg" width="125" height="200" class="plain" alt="&quot;GILLESPIE HAD CALLED&quot;" title="&quot;GILLESPIE HAD CALLED&quot;" />
+</a><span class="caption">&quot;GILLESPIE HAD CALLED&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p>He was gone. I shuddered. At
+the end of the next three hours I had
+been through perils so awful that all
+peace of mind and all cheerfulness
+were gone from me. Gillespie had
+called and thrown <i>me</i> out of the window.
+Jones arrived promptly, and
+when I got ready to do the cowhiding
+he took the job off my hands.
+In an encounter with a stranger, not
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25" href="#Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>
+in the bill of fare, I had lost my
+scalp. Another stranger, by the
+name of Thompson, left me a mere
+wreck and ruin of chaotic rags. And
+at last, at bay in the corner, and beset
+by an infuriated mob of editors,
+blacklegs, politicians, and desperadoes,
+who raved and swore and flourished
+their weapons about my head
+till the air shimmered with glancing
+flashes of steel, I was in the act of
+resigning my berth on the paper
+when the chief arrived, and with him
+a rabble of charmed and enthusiastic
+friends. Then ensued a scene of riot
+and carnage such as no human pen,
+or steel one either, could describe.
+People were shot, probed, dismembered,
+blown up, thrown out of the
+window. There was a brief tornado
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26" href="#Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>
+of murky blasphemy, with a confused
+and frantic war-dance glimmering
+through it, and then all was
+over. In five minutes there was
+silence, and the gory chief and I sat
+alone and surveyed the sanguinary
+ruin that strewed the floor around
+us.</p>
+
+<p>He said: "You'll like this place
+when you get used to it."</p>
+
+<p>I said: "I'll have to get you to
+excuse me; I think maybe I might
+write to suit you after a while; as
+soon as I had had some practice and
+learned the language I am confident
+I could. But, to speak the plain
+truth, that sort of energy of expression
+has its inconveniences, and
+a man is liable to interruption. You
+see that yourself. Vigorous writing
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27" href="#Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>
+is calculated to elevate the public,
+no doubt, but then I do not like to
+attract so much attention as it calls
+forth. I can't write with comfort
+when I am interrupted so much as I
+have been to-day. I like this berth
+well enough, but I don't like to be
+left here to wait on the customers.
+The experiences are novel, I grant
+you, and entertaining, too, after a
+fashion, but they are not judiciously
+distributed. A gentleman shoots at
+you through the window and cripples
+<i>me</i>; a bomb-shell comes down the
+stove-pipe for your gratification and
+sends the stove-door down <i>my</i> throat;
+a friend drops in to swap compliments
+with you, and freckles <i>me</i> with
+bullet-holes till my skin won't hold
+my principles; you go to dinner, and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28" href="#Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>
+Jones comes with his cowhide, Gillespie
+throws me out of the window,
+Thompson tears all my clothes off,
+and an entire stranger takes my
+scalp with the easy freedom of an old
+acquaintance; and in less than five
+minutes all the blackguards in the
+country arrive in their war-paint,
+and proceed to scare the rest of me
+to death with their tomahawks.
+Take it altogether, I never had such
+a spirited time in all my life as I
+have had to-day. No; I like you,
+and I like your calm, unruffled way of
+explaining things to the customers,
+but you see I am not used to it. The
+Southern heart is too impulsive;
+Southern hospitality is too lavish
+with the stranger. The paragraphs
+which I have written to-day, and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29" href="#Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>
+into whose cold sentences your masterly
+hand has infused the fervent
+spirit of Tennessean journalism, will
+wake up another nest of hornets.
+All that mob of editors will come&mdash;and
+they will come hungry, too, and
+want somebody for breakfast. I shall
+have to bid you adieu. I decline to
+be present at these festivities. I
+came South for my health; I will go
+back on the same errand, and suddenly.
+Tennessean journalism is too
+stirring for me."</p>
+
+<p>After which we parted with mutual
+regret, and I took apartments at the
+hospital.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><div><br /></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30" href="#Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="Nicodemus_Dodge" id="Nicodemus_Dodge"></a>Nicodemus Dodge&mdash;Printer</h2>
+
+
+<p>When I was a boy in a
+printing-office in Missouri,
+a loose-jointed,
+long-legged, tow-headed,
+jeans-clad, countrified cub of about
+sixteen lounged in one day, and without
+removing his hands from the
+depths of his trousers pockets or taking
+off his faded ruin of a slouch hat,
+whose broken rim hung limp and
+ragged about his eyes and ears like a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31" href="#Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>
+bug-eaten cabbage-leaf, stared indifferently
+around, then leaned his hip
+against the editors' table, crossed his
+mighty brogans, aimed at a distant
+fly from a crevice in his upper teeth,
+laid him low, and said, with composure:</p>
+
+<p>"Whar's the boss?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am the boss," said the editor,
+following this curious bit of architecture
+wonderingly along up to its
+clock-face with his eye.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't want anybody fur to learn
+the business, 'tain't likely?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't know. Would you
+like to learn it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Pap's so po' he cain't run me no
+mo', so I want to git a show somers
+if I kin, 'tain't no diffunce what&mdash;I'm
+strong and hearty, and I don't
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32" href="#Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>
+turn my back on no kind of work,
+hard nur soft."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think you would like to
+learn the printing business?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't re'ly k'yer a durn
+what I <i>do</i> learn, so's I git a chance
+fur to make my way. I'd jist as soon
+learn print'n' 's anything."</p>
+
+<p>"Can you read?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;middlin'."</p>
+
+<p>"Write?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I've seed people could lay
+over me thar."</p>
+
+<p>"Cipher?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not good enough to keep store,
+I don't reckon, but up as fur as
+twelve-times-twelve I ain't no slouch.
+'Tother side of that is what gits me."</p>
+
+<p>"Where is your home?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm f'm old Shelby."</p>
+
+<p>"What's your father's religious denomination?"
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33" href="#Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>"Him? Oh, he's a blacksmith."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no&mdash;I don't mean his
+trade. What's his <i>religious</i> denomination?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Oh</i>&mdash;I didn't understand you
+befo'. He's a Freemason."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no; you don't get my meaning
+yet. What I mean is, does he belong
+to any <i>church</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Now</i> you're talkin'! Gouldn't[sic]
+make out what you was a-tryin' to
+git through yo' head no way. B'long
+to a <i>church</i>! Why, boss, he's be'n
+the pizenest kind of a Free-will
+Babtis' for forty year. They ain't
+no pizener ones 'n' what <i>he</i> is. Mighty
+good man, pap is. Everybody says
+that. If they said any diffrunt they
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34" href="#Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>
+wouldn't say it whar <i>I</i> wuz&mdash;not
+<i>much</i> they wouldn't."</p>
+
+<p>"What is your own religion?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, boss, you've kind o' got
+me thar&mdash;and yit you hain't got me
+so mighty much, nuther. I think 't
+if a feller he'ps another feller when
+he's in trouble, and don't cuss, and
+don't do no mean things, nur noth'n'
+he ain' no business to do, and don't
+spell the Saviour's name with a little
+g, he ain't runnin' no resks&mdash;he's about
+as saift as if he b'longed to a church."</p>
+
+<p>"But suppose he did spell it with
+a little g&mdash;what then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if he done it a-purpose, I
+reckon he wouldn't stand no chance,&mdash;he
+<i>oughtn't</i> to have no chance,
+anyway, I'm most rotten certain
+'bout that."</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35" href="#Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>
+</p>
+<p>"What is your name?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nicodemus Dodge."</p>
+
+<p>"I think maybe you'll do, Nicodemus.
+We'll give you a trial, anyway."</p>
+
+<p>"All right."</p>
+
+<p>"When would you like to begin?"</p>
+
+<p>"Now."</p>
+
+<p>So, within ten minutes after we
+had first glimpsed this nondescript
+he was one of us, and with his coat
+off and hard at it.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond that end of our establishment
+which was farthest from the
+street was a deserted garden, pathless,
+and thickly grown with the
+bloomy and villanous "jimpson"
+weed and its common friend the
+stately sunflower. In the midst of
+this mournful spot was a decayed and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36" href="#Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
+aged little "frame" house with but
+one room, one window, and no ceiling&mdash;it
+had been a smoke-house a
+generation before. Nicodemus was
+given this lonely and ghostly den as a
+bedchamber.</p>
+
+<p>The village smarties recognized a
+treasure in Nicodemus right away&mdash;a
+butt to play jokes on. It was easy
+to see that he was inconceivably
+green and confiding. George Jones
+had the glory of perpetrating the
+first joke on him; he gave him a
+cigar with a fire-cracker in it and
+winked to the crowd to come; the
+thing exploded presently and swept
+away the bulk of Nicodemus's eyebrows
+and eyelashes. He simply
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"I consider them kind of seeg'yars
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37" href="#Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>
+dangersome"&mdash;and seemed to suspect
+nothing. The next evening Nicodemus
+waylaid George and poured a
+bucket of ice-water over him.</p>
+
+<p>One day, while Nicodemus was
+in swimming, Tom McElroy "tied"
+his clothes. Nicodemus made a bonfire
+of Tom's by way of retaliation.</p>
+
+<p>A third joke was played upon Nicodemus
+a day or two later&mdash;he walked
+up the middle aisle of the village
+church, Sunday night, with a staring
+hand-bill pinned between his shoulders.
+The joker spent the remainder
+of the night, after church, in the
+cellar of a deserted house, and Nicodemus
+sat on the cellar door till
+towards breakfast-time to make sure
+that the prisoner remembered that
+if any noise was made some rough
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38" href="#Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>
+treatment would be the consequence.
+The cellar had two feet of stagnant
+water in it, and was bottomed with
+six inches of soft mud.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 124px;">
+<a href="images/ill054.jpg" name="WHEEZING_THE_MUSIC" id="WHEEZING_THE_MUSIC">
+<img src="images/ill054tn.jpg" width="124" height="200" class="plain" alt="&quot;WHEEZING THE MUSIC OF &#39;CAMPTOWN RACES&#39;&quot;" title="&quot;WHEEZING THE MUSIC OF &#39;CAMPTOWN RACES&#39;&quot;" />
+</a><span class="caption">&quot;WHEEZING THE MUSIC OF &#39;CAMPTOWN RACES&#39;&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>But I wander from the point. It
+was the subject of skeletons that
+brought this boy back to my recollection.
+Before a very long time
+had elapsed, the village smarties
+began to feel an uncomfortable consciousness
+of not having made a
+very shining success out of their attempts
+on the simpleton from "old
+Shelby." Experimenters grew scarce
+and chary. Now the young doctor
+came to the rescue. There was delight
+and applause when he proposed
+to scare Nicodemus to death, and
+explained how he was going to do it.
+He had a noble new skeleton&mdash;the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39" href="#Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>
+skeleton of the late and only local
+celebrity, Jimmy Finn, the village
+drunkard&mdash;a grisly piece of property
+which he had bought of Jimmy Finn
+himself, at auction, for fifty dollars,
+under great competition, when Jimmy
+lay very sick in the tanyard a fortnight
+before his death. The fifty
+dollars had gone promptly for whiskey
+and had considerably hurried up the
+change of ownership in the skeleton.
+The doctor would put Jimmy Finn's
+skeleton in Nicodemus's bed!</p>
+
+<p>This was done&mdash;about half-past
+ten in the evening. About Nicodemus's
+usual bedtime&mdash;midnight&mdash;the
+village jokers came creeping
+stealthily through the jimpson weeds
+and sunflowers towards the lonely
+frame den. They reached the window
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40" href="#Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>
+and peeped in. There sat the
+long-legged pauper, on his bed, in a
+very short shirt, and nothing more;
+he was dangling his legs contentedly
+back and forth, and wheezing the
+music of "Camptown Races" out of
+a paper-overlaid comb which he was
+pressing against his mouth; by him
+lay a new jews-harp, a new top, a
+solid india-rubber ball, a handful of
+painted marbles, five pounds of
+"store" candy, and a well-knawed
+slab of gingerbread as big and as thick
+as a volume of sheet music. He
+had sold the skeleton to a travelling
+quack for three dollars and was
+enjoying the result!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><div><br /></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41" href="#Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>
+</p>
+<h2><a name="Mr_Blokes_Item" id="Mr_Blokes_Item"></a>Mr. Bloke's Item</h2>
+
+
+<p>Our esteemed friend, Mr.
+John William Bloke, of
+Virginia City, walked into
+the office where we are
+sub-editor at a late hour last night,
+with an expression of profound and
+heartfelt suffering upon his countenance,
+and, sighing heavily, laid the
+following item reverently upon the
+desk, and walked slowly out again.
+He paused a moment at the door,
+and seemed struggling to command
+his feelings sufficiently to enable
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42" href="#Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>
+him to speak, and then, nodding his
+head towards his manuscript, ejaculated
+in a broken voice, "Friend of
+mine&mdash;oh! how sad!" and burst into
+tears. We were so moved at his
+distress that we did not think to call
+him back and endeavor to comfort
+him until he was gone, and it was
+too late. The paper had already
+gone to press, but knowing that our
+friend would consider the publication
+of this item important, and cherishing
+the hope that to print it would
+afford a melancholy satisfaction to
+his sorrowing heart, we stopped the
+press at once and inserted it in our
+columns:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Distressing Accident</span>.&mdash;Last evening,
+about six o'clock, as Mr. William
+Schuyler, an old and respectable citizen
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43" href="#Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>
+of South Park, was leaving his residence
+to go down-town, as has been his usual
+custom for many years with the exception
+only of a short interval in the spring
+of 1850, during which he was confined
+to his bed by injuries received in attempting
+to stop a runaway horse by
+thoughtlessly placing himself directly
+in its wake and throwing up his hands
+and shouting, which, if he had done so
+even a single moment sooner, must
+inevitably have frightened the animal
+still more instead of checking its speed,
+although disastrous enough to himself
+as it was, and rendered more melancholy
+and distressing by reason of the
+presence of his wife's mother, who was
+there and saw the sad occurrence, notwithstanding
+it is at least likely, though
+not necessarily so, that she should be
+reconnoitring in another direction when
+incidents occur, not being vivacious and
+on the lookout, as a general thing, but
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44" href="#Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>
+even the reverse, as her own mother is
+said to have stated, who is no more,
+but died in the full hope of a glorious
+resurrection, upward of three years ago,
+aged eighty-six, being a Christian woman
+and without guile, as it were, or
+property, in consequence of the fire of
+1849, which destroyed every single
+thing she had in the world. But such
+is life. Let us all take warning by this
+solemn occurrence, and let us endeavor
+so to conduct ourselves that when we
+come to die we can do it. Let us place
+our hands upon our heart, and say
+with earnestness and sincerity that
+from this day forth we will beware of
+the intoxicating bowl.&mdash;<i>First edition of
+the Californian.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>The head editor has been in here
+raising the mischief, and tearing his
+hair and kicking the furniture about,
+and abusing me like a pickpocket.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45" href="#Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>
+He says that every time he leaves
+me in charge of the paper for half
+an hour, I get imposed upon by the
+first infant or the first idiot that comes
+along. And he says that that distressing
+item of Mr. Bloke's is nothing
+but a lot of distressing bosh, and has
+no point to it, and no sense in it, and
+no information in it, and that there
+was no sort of necessity for stopping
+the press to publish it.</p>
+
+<p>Now all this comes of being good-hearted.
+If I had been as unaccommodating
+and unsympathetic as
+some people, I would have told Mr.
+Bloke that I wouldn't receive his
+communication at such a late hour;
+but no, his snuffling distress touched
+my heart, and I jumped at the
+chance of doing something to modify
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46" href="#Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>
+his misery. I never read his item
+to see whether there was anything
+wrong about it, but hastily wrote the
+few lines which preceded it, and
+sent it to the printers. And what
+has my kindness done for me? It
+has done nothing but bring down
+upon me a storm of abuse and ornamental
+blasphemy.</p>
+
+<p>Now I will read that item myself,
+and see if there is any foundation for
+all this fuss. And if there is, the
+author of it shall hear from me.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>I have read it, and I am bound
+to admit that it seems a little mixed
+at a first glance. However, I will
+peruse it once more.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>I have read it again, and it does
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47" href="#Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>
+really seem a good deal more mixed
+than ever.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>I have read it over five times,
+but if I can get at the meaning of it,
+I wish I may get my just deserts.
+It won't bear analysis. There are
+things about it which I cannot
+understand at all. It don't say
+what ever became of William Schuyler.
+It just says enough about him
+to get one interested in his career,
+and then drops him. Who is William
+Schuyler, anyhow, and what part of
+South Park did he live in, and if he
+started down-town at six o'clock,
+did he ever get there, and if he did,
+did anything happen to him? Is <i>he</i>
+the individual that met with the
+"distressing accident"? Considering
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48" href="#Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>
+the elaborate circumstantiality of detail
+observable in the item, it seems
+to me that it ought to contain more
+information than it does. On the
+contrary, it is obscure&mdash;and not only
+obscure, but utterly incomprehensible.
+Was the breaking of Mr. Schuyler's
+leg, fifteen years ago, the "distressing
+accident" that plunged Mr.
+Bloke into unspeakable grief, and
+caused him to come up here at dead
+of night and stop our press to acquaint
+the world with the circumstance?
+Or did the "distressing accident"
+consist in the destruction of
+Schuyler's mother-in-law's property
+in early times? Or did it consist in
+the death of that person herself three
+years ago (albeit it does not appear
+that she died by accident)? In a
+word, what <i>did</i> that "distressing accident"
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49" href="#Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>
+consist in? What did that
+drivelling ass of a Schuyler stand <i>in
+the wake</i> of a runaway horse for, with
+his shouting and gesticulating, if he
+wanted to stop him? And how the
+mischief could he get run over by a
+horse that had already passed beyond
+him? And what are we to
+take "warning" by? And how is this
+extraordinary chapter of incomprehensibilities
+going to be a "lesson" to
+us? And, above all, what has the intoxicating
+"bowl" got to do with it,
+anyhow? It is not stated that Schuyler
+drank, or that his wife drank, or
+that his mother-in-law drank, or
+that the horse drank&mdash;wherefore,
+then, the reference to the intoxicating
+bowl? It does seem to me that
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50" href="#Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>
+if Mr. Bloke had let the intoxicating
+bowl alone himself, he never would
+have got into so much trouble about
+this exasperating imaginary accident.
+I have read this absurd item over
+and over again, with all its insinuating
+plausibility, until my head swims,
+but I can make neither head nor tail
+of it. There certainly seems to have
+been an accident of some kind or
+other, but it is impossible to determine
+what the nature of it was, or
+who was the sufferer by it. I do not
+like to do it, but I feel compelled to
+request that the next time anything
+happens to one of Mr. Bloke's friends,
+he will append such explanatory
+notes to his account of it as will
+enable me to find out what sort of an
+accident it was and whom it happened
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51" href="#Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>
+to. I had rather all his friends
+should die than that I should be
+driven to the verge of lunacy again
+in trying to cipher out the meaning
+of another such production as the
+above.</p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 123px;">
+<a href="images/ill066.jpg" name="I_HAVE_READ" id="I_HAVE_READ">
+<img src="images/ill066tn.jpg" width="123" height="200" class="plain" alt="&quot;I HAVE READ THIS ABSURD ITEM OVER&quot;" title="&quot;I HAVE READ THIS ABSURD ITEM OVER&quot;" />
+</a><span class="caption">&quot;I HAVE READ THIS ABSURD ITEM OVER&quot;</span>
+</div>
+<!-- image should face page 50 -->
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><div><br /></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52" href="#Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>
+</p>
+<h2><a name="How_I_Edited" id="How_I_Edited"></a>How I Edited an Agricultural Paper</h2>
+
+
+
+<p>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.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53" href="#Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>
+</p>
+<p>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 office,
+towards sundown, a group of men
+and boys at the foot of the stairs
+dispersed with one impulse, and
+gave me passageway, 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
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54" href="#Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55" href="#Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>He put the paper on his lap, and
+while he polished his spectacles with
+his handkerchief, he said, "Are you
+the new editor?"</p>
+
+<p>I said I was.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you ever edited an agricultural
+paper before?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," I said; "this is my first
+attempt."</p>
+
+<p>"Very likely. Have you had any experience
+in agriculture practically?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; I believe I have not."</p>
+
+<p>"Some instinct told me so," said
+the old gentleman, putting on his
+spectacles, and looking over them
+at me with asperity, while he folded
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56" href="#Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>
+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:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Turnips should never be pulled,
+it injures them. It is much better to
+send a boy up and let him shake the
+tree."</p></div>
+
+<p>"Now, what do you think of that&mdash;for
+I really suppose you wrote it?"</p>
+
+<p>"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 township alone
+by being pulled in a half-ripe condition,
+when, if they had sent a boy
+up to shake the tree&mdash;"</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57" href="#Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>
+</p>
+<p>"Shake your grandmother! Turnips
+don't grow on trees!"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 125px;">
+<a href="images/ill076.jpg" name="A_LONG_CADAVEROUS" id="A_LONG_CADAVEROUS">
+<img src="images/ill076tn.jpg" width="125" height="200" class="plain" alt="&quot;A LONG CADAVEROUS CREATURE&quot;" title="&quot;A LONG CADAVEROUS CREATURE&quot;" />
+</a><span class="caption">&quot;A LONG CADAVEROUS CREATURE&quot;</span>
+</div>
+<p>Pretty soon after this a long
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58" href="#Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>
+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 towards 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:</p>
+
+<p>"There, you wrote that. Read it
+to me&mdash;quick! Relieve me. I suffer."</p>
+
+
+
+<p>I read as follows; and as the sentences
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59" href="#Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>
+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:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 corn-stalks and planting
+his buckwheat-cakes in July instead of
+August.</p>
+
+<p>"Concerning the pumpkin.&mdash;This
+berry is a favorite with the natives of
+the interior of New England, who prefer
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60" href="#Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, as the warm weather approaches,
+and the ganders begin to
+spawn"&mdash;</p></div>
+
+<p>The excited listener sprang towards
+me to shake hands, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"There, there&mdash;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
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61" href="#Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>
+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 <i>am</i> crazy; and with
+that I fetched a howl that you
+might have heard two miles, and
+started out to kill somebody&mdash;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 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 <i>is</i> certain, and I tell
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62" href="#Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>
+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.
+<i>Good</i>-bye, sir."</p>
+
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63" href="#Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>
+expected you.]</p>
+
+<p>The editor was looking sad and
+perplexed and dejected.</p>
+
+<p>He surveyed the wreck which that
+old rioter and these two young farmers
+had made, and then said: "This
+is a sad business&mdash;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&mdash;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
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64" href="#Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>
+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 polecat
+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&mdash;entirely
+superfluous. Nothing
+disturbs clams. Clams <i>always</i>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65" href="#Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>
+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&mdash;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
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66" href="#Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>
+of your discussing oyster-beds under
+the head of 'Landscape Gardening.'
+I want you to go. Nothing on earth
+could persuade me to take another
+holiday. Oh! why didn't you <i>tell</i>
+me you didn't know anything about
+agriculture?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Tell</i> 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
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67" href="#Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>
+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 warwhoop
+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 campfire
+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&mdash;yam?
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68" href="#Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>
+Men, as a 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 poor-house. <i>You</i> try to tell <i>me</i>
+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
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69" href="#Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>
+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&mdash;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&mdash;not a farmer
+in it, nor a solitary individual who
+could tell a watermelon-tree from a
+peach-vine to save his life. <i>You</i> are
+the loser by this rupture, not me,
+Pie-plant. Adios."</p>
+
+<p>I then left.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><div><br /></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70" href="#Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>
+</p>
+<h2><a name="The_Killing_of_Julius" id="The_Killing_of_Julius"></a>The Killing of Julius C&aelig;sar "Localized"</h2>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Being the only true and reliable account
+ever published; taken from
+the "Roman Daily Evening Fasces,"
+of the date of that tremendous
+occurrence.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<p>Nothing in the world
+affords a newspaper reporter
+so much satisfaction
+as gathering up the
+details of a bloody and mysterious
+murder, and writing them up with
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71" href="#Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
+aggravating circumstantiality. He
+takes a living delight in this labor of
+love&mdash;for such it is to him, especially
+if he knows that all the other papers
+have gone to press, and his will be
+the only one that will contain the
+dreadful intelligence. A feeling of
+regret has often come over me that I
+was not reporting in Rome when
+C&aelig;sar was killed&mdash;reporting on an
+evening paper, and the only one in
+the city, and getting at least twelve
+hours ahead of the morning-paper
+boys with this most magnificent
+"item" that ever fell to the lot of
+the craft. Other events have happened
+as startling as this, but none
+that possessed so peculiarly all the
+characteristics of the favorite "item"
+of the present day, magnified into
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72" href="#Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>
+grandeur and sublimity by the high
+rank, fame, and social and political
+standing of the actors in it.</p>
+
+<p>However, as I was not permitted
+to report C&aelig;sar's assassination in
+the regular way, it has at least afforded
+me rare satisfaction to translate
+the following able account of it
+from the original Latin of the <i>Roman
+Daily Evening Fasces</i> of that date&mdash;second
+edition.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Our usually quiet city of Rome was
+thrown into a state of wild excitement
+yesterday by the occurrence of one of
+those bloody affrays which sicken the
+heart and fill the soul with fear, while
+they inspire all thinking men with forebodings
+for the future of a city where
+human life is held so cheaply, and the
+gravest laws are so openly set at defiance.
+As the result of that affray,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73" href="#Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>
+it is our painful duty, as public journalists,
+to record the death of one of our
+most esteemed citizens&mdash;a man whose
+name is known wherever this paper
+circulates, and whose fame it has been
+our pleasure and our privilege to extend,
+and also to protect from the tongue
+of slander and falsehood, to the best of
+our poor ability. We refer to Mr. J.
+C&aelig;sar, the Emperor-elect.</p>
+
+<p>"The facts of the case, as nearly as
+our reporter could determine them
+from the conflicting statements of eyewitnesses,
+were about as follows:&mdash;The
+affair was an election row, of course.
+Nine-tenths of the ghastly butcheries
+that disgrace the city nowadays grow
+out of the bickerings and jealousies and
+animosities engendered by these accursed
+elections. Rome would be the
+gainer by it if her very constables were
+elected to serve a century; for in our
+experience we have never even been
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74" href="#Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>
+able to choose a dog-pelter without
+celebrating the event with a dozen
+knockdowns and a general cramming
+of the station-house with drunken
+vagabonds overnight. It is said that
+when the immense majority for C&aelig;sar
+at the polls in the market was declared
+the other day, and the crown was offered
+to that gentleman, even his amazing
+unselfishness in refusing it three times
+was not sufficient to save him from
+the whispered insults of such men as
+Casca, of the Tenth Ward, and other
+hirelings of the disappointed candidate,
+hailing mostly from the Eleventh and
+Thirteenth and other outside districts,
+who were overheard speaking ironically
+and contemptuously of Mr. C&aelig;sar's conduct
+upon that occasion.</p>
+
+<p>"We are further informed that there
+are many among us who think they are
+justified in believing that the assassination
+of Julius C&aelig;sar was a put-up thing&mdash;a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75" href="#Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>
+cut-and-dried arrangement, hatched
+by Marcus Brutus and a lot of his
+hired roughs, and carried out only too
+faithfully according to the programme.
+Whether there be good grounds for this
+suspicion or not, we leave to the people
+to judge for themselves, only asking
+that they will read the following account
+of the sad occurrence carefully
+and dispassionately before they render
+that judgment.</p>
+
+<p>"The Senate was already in session,
+and C&aelig;sar was coming down the street
+towards the Capitol, conversing with
+some personal friends, and followed, as
+usual, by a large number of citizens.
+Just as he was passing in front of Demosthenes
+&amp; Thucydides' drug-store,
+he was observing casually to a gentleman,
+who, our informant thinks, is a
+fortune-teller, that the Ides of March
+were come. The reply was, 'Yes, they
+are come, but not gone yet.' At this
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76" href="#Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>
+moment Artemidorus stepped up and
+passed the time of day, and asked
+C&aelig;sar to read a schedule or a tract or
+something of the kind, which he had
+brought for his perusal. Mr. Decius
+Brutus also said something about an
+'humble suit' which <i>he</i> wanted read.
+Artemidorus begged that attention
+might be paid to his first, because it was
+of personal consequence to C&aelig;sar. The
+latter replied that what concerned himself
+should be read last, or words to
+that effect. Artemidorus begged and
+beseeched him to read the paper instantly.<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a>
+However, C&aelig;sar shook him
+off, and refused to read any petition
+in the street. He then entered the
+Capitol, and the crowd followed him.</p></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77" href="#Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+</p>
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"About this time the following conversation
+was overheard, and we consider
+that, taken in connection with
+the events which succeeded it, it bears
+an appalling significance: Mr. Papilius
+Lena remarked to George W. Cassius
+(commonly known as the 'Nobby Boy
+of the Third Ward'), a bruiser in the pay
+of the Opposition, that he hoped his
+enterprise to-day might thrive; and
+when Cassius asked, 'What enterprise?'
+he only closed his left eye temporarily
+and said with simulated indifference,
+'Fare you well,' and sauntered towards
+C&aelig;sar. Marcus Brutus, who is suspected
+of being the ringleader of the
+band that killed C&aelig;sar, asked what it
+was that Lena had said. Cassius told
+him, and added, in a low tone, '<i>I fear
+our purpose is discovered.</i>'</p>
+
+<p>"Brutus told his wretched accomplice
+to keep an eye on Lena, and a
+moment after Cassius urged that lean
+and hungry vagrant, Casca, whose
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78" href="#Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>
+reputation here is none of the best, to
+be sudden for <i>he feared prevention</i>.
+He then turned to Brutus, apparently
+much excited, and asked what should
+be done, and swore that either he or
+C&aelig;sar <i>should never turn back</i>&mdash;he would
+kill himself first. At this time C&aelig;sar
+was talking to some of the back-country
+members about the approaching fall
+elections, and paying little attention
+to what was going on around him.
+Billy Trebonius got into conversation
+with the people's friend and C&aelig;sar's&mdash;Mark
+Antony&mdash;and under some pretence
+or other got him away, and Brutus,
+Decius, Casca, Cinna, Metellus Cimber,
+and others of the gang of infamous
+desperadoes that infest Rome at present,
+closed around the doomed C&aelig;sar.
+Then Metellus Cimber knelt down and
+begged that his brother might be recalled
+from banishment, but C&aelig;sar
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79" href="#Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>
+rebuked him for his fawning conduct,
+and refused to grant his petition. Immediately,
+at Cimber's request, first
+Brutus and then Cassius begged for
+the return of the banished Publius;
+but C&aelig;sar still refused. He said he
+could not be moved; that he was as
+fixed as the North Star, and proceeded
+to speak in the most complimentary
+terms of the firmness of that star and its
+steady character. Then he said he was
+like it, and he believed he was the only
+man in the country that was; therefore,
+since he was 'constant' that Cimber
+should be banished, he was also
+'constant' that he should stay banished,
+and he'd be hanged if he didn't keep
+him so!</p>
+
+<p>"Instantly seizing upon this shallow
+pretext for a fight, Casca sprang at
+C&aelig;sar and struck him with a dirk.
+C&aelig;sar grabbing him by the arm with
+his right hand, and launching a blow
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80" href="#Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>
+straight from the shoulder with his
+left that sent the reptile bleeding to
+the earth. He then backed up against
+Pompey's statue, and squared himself
+to receive his assailants. Cassius and
+Cimber and Cinna rushed upon him
+with their daggers drawn, and the
+former succeeded in inflicting a wound
+upon his body; but before he could
+strike again, and before either of the
+others could strike at all, C&aelig;sar stretched
+the three miscreants at his feet with
+as many blows of his powerful fist.
+By this time the Senate was in an
+indescribable uproar; the throng of
+citizens in the lobbies had blockaded
+the doors in their frantic efforts to
+escape from the building, the sergeant-at-arms
+and his assistants were struggling
+with the assassins, venerable
+senators had cast aside their encumbering
+robes, and were leaping over
+benches and flying down the aisles in
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81" href="#Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>
+wild confusion towards the shelter of
+the committee-rooms, and a thousand
+voices were shouting 'Po-lice! Po-lice!'
+in discordant tones that rose above the
+frightful din like shrieking winds above
+the roaring of a tempest. And amid
+it all, great C&aelig;sar stood with his back
+against the statue, like a lion at bay,
+and fought his assailants weaponless
+and hand to hand, with the defiant
+bearing and the unwavering courage
+which he had shown before on many a
+bloody field. Billy Trebonius and Caius
+Legarius struck him with their daggers
+and fell, as their brother-conspirators
+before them had fallen. But at last,
+when C&aelig;sar saw his old friend Brutus
+step forward armed with a murderous
+knife, it is said he seemed utterly overpowered
+with grief and amazement,
+and dropping his invincible left arm
+by his side, he hid his face in the folds
+of his mantle and received the treacherous
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82" href="#Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>
+blow without an effort to stay the
+hand that gave it. He only said, '<i>Et
+tu, Brute?</i>' and fell lifeless on the marble
+pavement.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 124px;">
+<a href="images/ill082.jpg" name="THERE_WAS_NOTHING" id="THERE_WAS_NOTHING">
+<img src="images/ill082tn.jpg" width="124" height="200" class="plain" alt="&quot;THERE WAS NOTHING IN THE POCKETS&quot;" title="&quot;THERE WAS NOTHING IN THE POCKETS&quot;" />
+</a><span class="caption">&quot;THERE WAS NOTHING IN THE POCKETS&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"We learn that the coat deceased
+had on when he was killed was the
+same one he wore in his tent on the
+afternoon of the day he overcame the
+Nervii, and that when it was removed
+from the corpse it was found to be
+cut and gashed in no less than seven
+different places. There was nothing in
+the pockets. It will be exhibited at
+the coroner's inquest, and will be damning
+proof of the fact of the killing.
+These latter facts may be relied on,
+as we get them from Mark Antony,
+whose position enables him to learn
+every item of news connected with the
+one subject of absorbing interest of
+to-day.</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Later</span>.&mdash;While the coroner was
+summoning a jury, Mark Antony and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83" href="#Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>
+other friends of the late C&aelig;sar got hold
+of the body, and lugged it off to the
+Forum, and at last accounts Antony
+and Brutus were making speeches over
+it and raising such a row among the
+people that, as we go to press, the
+chief of police is satisfied there is going
+to be a riot, and is taking measures
+accordingly."</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+<p class="center">THE END</p></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 95%;" /><div class="footnotes"><div class="footnote">
+<h3>FOOTNOTE</h3><p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">1</span></a> Mark that: It is hinted by William
+Shakespeare, who saw the beginning and
+the end of the unfortunate affray, that this
+"schedule" was simply a note discovering
+to C&aelig;sar that a plot was brewing to take
+his life.</p></div></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Editorial Wild Oats, by Mark Twain
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+</body>
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+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Editorial Wild Oats, by Mark Twain
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Editorial Wild Oats
+
+Author: Mark Twain
+
+Release Date: October 6, 2006 [EBook #19484]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EDITORIAL WILD OATS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzan Flanagan and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Editorial Wild Oats
+
+BY
+
+Mark Twain
+
+ILLUSTRATED
+
+NEW YORK AND LONDON
+HARPER & BROTHERS
+PUBLISHERS--MCMV
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1875, 1899, 1903, by SAMUEL L. CLEMENS.
+
+Copyright, 1879, 1899, by SAMUEL L. CLEMENS.
+
+Copyright, 1905, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
+
+_All rights reserved._
+
+Published September, 1905.
+
+[Illustration: See p. 57
+
+"I FANCIED HE WAS DISPLEASED"]
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+                                                   PAGE
+MY FIRST LITERARY VENTURE                             3
+
+JOURNALISM IN TENNESSEE                              11
+
+NICODEMUS DODGE--PRINTER                             30
+
+MR. BLOKE'S ITEM                                     41
+
+HOW I EDITED AN AGRICULTURAL
+PAPER                                                52
+
+THE KILLING OF JULIUS CAESAR "LOCALIZED"              70
+
+
+
+
+Illustrations
+
+
+"I FANCIED HE WAS DISPLEASED"            _Frontispiece_
+
+"HE HAD CONCLUDED HE
+WOULDN'T"                              _Facing p._    4
+
+"GILLESPIE HAD CALLED"                 "             24
+
+"WHEEZING THE MUSIC OF 'CAMPTOWN
+RACES'"                                "             38
+
+"I HAVE READ THIS ABSURD ITEM
+OVER"                                  "             50
+
+"A LONG CADAVEROUS CREATURE"           "             58
+
+"THERE WAS NOTHING IN THE
+POCKETS"                               "             82
+
+
++----------------------------------------------------------------------+
+|Transcriber's Note: The dialect in this book is transcribed exactly as|
+|in the original.                                                         |
++----------------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+Editorial Wild Oats
+
+
+
+
+My First Literary Venture
+
+
+I was a very smart child at the age of thirteen--an unusually
+smart child, I thought at the time. It was then that I did my first
+newspaper scribbling, and most unexpectedly to me it stirred up a
+fine sensation in the community. It did, indeed, and I was very
+proud of it, too. I was a printer's "devil," and a progressive and
+aspiring one. My uncle had me on his paper (the _Weekly Hannibal
+Journal_, two dollars a year, in advance--five hundred subscribers,
+and they paid in cord-wood, cabbages, and unmarketable turnips),
+and on a lucky summer's day he left town to be gone a week, and
+asked me if I thought I could edit one issue of the paper
+judiciously. Ah! didn't I want to try! Higgins was the editor on
+the rival paper. He had lately been jilted, and one night a friend
+found an open note on the poor fellow's bed, in which he stated
+that he could no longer endure life and had drowned himself in Bear
+Creek. The friend ran down there and discovered Higgins wading back
+to shore. He had concluded he wouldn't. The village was full of it
+for several days, but Higgins did not suspect it. I thought this
+was a fine opportunity. I wrote an elaborately wretched account of
+the whole matter, and then illustrated it with villanous cuts
+engraved on the bottoms of wooden type with a jack-knife--one of
+them a picture of Higgins wading out into the creek in his shirt,
+with a lantern, sounding the depth of the water with a walking-stick.
+I thought it was desperately funny, and was densely unconscious that
+there was any moral obliquity about such a publication. Being
+satisfied with this effort, I looked around for other worlds to
+conquer, and it struck me that it would make good, interesting matter
+to charge the editor of a neighboring country paper with a piece of
+gratuitous rascality and "see him squirm."
+
+[Illustration: "HE HAD CONCLUDED HE WOULDN'T"]
+
+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 it, but merely because I thought
+it was my duty to make the paper lively.
+
+Next I gently touched up the newest stranger--the lion of the day,
+the gorgeous journeyman tailor from Quincy. He was a simpering
+coxcomb of the first water, and the "loudest" dressed man in the
+State. He was an inveterate woman-killer. Every week he wrote lushy
+"poetry" for the _Journal_, about his newest conquest. His rhymes
+for my week were headed, "TO MARY IN H--L," meaning to Mary in
+Hannibal, of course. But while setting up the piece I was suddenly
+riven from head to heel by what I regarded as a perfect thunderbolt
+of humor, and I compressed it into a snappy footnote at the
+bottom--thus:
+
+  "We will let this thing pass, just this once; but we wish Mr. J.
+  Gordon Runnels to understand distinctly that we have a character
+  to sustain, and from this time forth when he wants to commune
+  with his friends in h--l, he must select some other medium than
+  the columns of this journal!"
+
+The paper came out, and I never knew any little thing attract so
+much attention as those playful trifles of mine.
+
+For once the _Hannibal Journal_ was in demand--a novelty it had
+not experienced before. The whole town was stirred. Higgins dropped
+in with a double-barrelled shot-gun early in the forenoon. When he
+found that it was an infant (as he called me) that had done him the
+damage, he simply pulled my ears and went away; but he threw up his
+situation that night and left town for good. The tailor came with
+his goose and a pair of shears; but he despised me, too, and
+departed for the South that night. The two lampooned citizens came
+with threats of libel, and went away incensed at my insignificance.
+The country editor pranced in with a warwhoop 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. My uncle was very angry when he got back--unreasonably so, I
+thought, considering what an impetus I had given the paper, and
+considering also that gratitude for his preservation ought to have
+been uppermost in his mind, inasmuch as by his delay he had so
+wonderfully escaped dissection, tomahawking, libel, and getting his
+head shot off. But he softened when he looked at the accounts and
+saw that I had actually booked the unparalleled number of
+thirty-three new subscribers, and had the vegetables to show for
+it--cord-wood, cabbage, beans, and unsalable turnips enough to run
+the family for two years!
+
+
+
+
+Journalism in Tennessee
+
+    The editor of the Memphis _Avalanche_ swoops thus mildly down upon
+    a correspondent who posted him as a Radical: "While he was writing
+    the first word, the middle, dotting his i's, crossing his t's, and
+    punching his period, he knew he was concocting a sentence that was
+    saturated with infamy and reeking with falsehood."--_Exchange_.
+
+
+I was told by the physician that a Southern climate would improve
+my health, and so I went down to Tennessee and got a berth on the
+_Morning-Glory and Johnson County Warwhoop_ as associate editor.
+When I went on duty I found the chief editor sitting tilted back in
+a three-legged chair with his feet on a pine table. There was
+another pine table in the room and another afflicted chair, and
+both were half buried under newspapers and scraps and sheets of
+manuscript. There was a wooden box of sand, sprinkled with
+cigar-stubs and "old soldiers," and a stove with a door hanging by
+its upper hinge. The chief editor had a long-tailed black cloth
+frock-coat on, and white linen pants. His boots were small and
+neatly blacked. He wore a ruffled shirt, a large seal ring, a
+standing collar of obsolete pattern, and a checkered neckerchief
+with the ends hanging down. Date of costume about 1848. He was
+smoking a cigar, and trying to think of a word, and in pawing his
+hair he had rumpled his locks a good deal. He was scowling
+fearfully, and I judged that he was concocting a particularly
+knotty editorial. He told me to take the exchanges and skim through
+them and write up the "Spirit of the Tennessee Press," condensing
+into the article all of their contents that seemed of interest.
+
+I wrote as follows:
+
+  "SPIRIT OF THE TENNESSEE PRESS
+
+  "The editors of the _Semi-Weekly Earthquake_ evidently labor
+  under a misapprehension with regard to the Ballyhack railroad. It
+  is not the object of the company to leave Buzzardville off to one
+  side. On the contrary, they consider it one of the most important
+  points along the line, and consequently can have no desire to
+  slight it. The gentlemen of the _Earthquake_ will, of course,
+  take pleasure in making the correction.
+
+  "John W. Blossom, Esq., the able editor of the Higginsville
+  _Thunderbolt and Battle-Cry of Freedom_, arrived in the city
+  yesterday. He is stopping at the Van Buren House.
+
+  "We observe that our contemporary of the Mud Springs _Morning
+  Howl_ has fallen into the error of supposing that the election of
+  Van Werter is not an established fact, but he will have
+  discovered his mistake before this reminder reaches him, no
+  doubt. He was doubtless misled by incomplete election returns.
+
+  "It is pleasant to note that the city of Blathersville is
+  endeavoring to contract with some New York gentlemen to pave its
+  wellnigh impassable streets with the Nicholson pavement. The
+  _Daily Hurrah_ urges the measure with ability, and seems
+  confident of ultimate success."
+
+I passed my manuscript over to the chief editor for acceptance,
+alteration, or destruction. He glanced at it and his face clouded.
+He ran his eye down the pages, and his countenance grew portentous.
+It was easy to see that something was wrong. Presently he sprang up
+and said:
+
+"Thunder and lightning! Do you suppose I am going to speak of
+those cattle that way? Do you suppose my subscribers are going to
+stand such gruel as that? Give me the pen!"
+
+I never saw a pen scrape and scratch its way so viciously, or
+plough through another man's verbs and adjectives so relentlessly.
+While he was in the midst of his work, somebody shot at him through
+the open window, and marred the symmetry of my ear.
+
+"Ah," said he, "that is that scoundrel Smith, of the _Moral
+Volcano_--he was due yesterday." And he snatched a navy revolver
+from his belt and fired. Smith dropped, shot in the thigh. The shot
+spoiled Smith's aim, who was just taking a second chance, and he
+crippled a stranger. It was me. Merely a finger shot off.
+
+Then the chief editor went on with his erasures and
+interlineations. Just as he finished them a hand-grenade came down
+the stove-pipe, and the explosion shivered the stove into a
+thousand fragments. However, it did no further damage, except that
+a vagrant piece knocked a couple of my teeth out.
+
+"That stove is utterly ruined," said the chief editor.
+
+I said I believed it was.
+
+"Well, no matter--don't want it this kind of weather. I know the
+man that did it. I'll get him. Now, _here_ is the way this stuff
+ought to be written."
+
+I took the manuscript. It was scarred with erasures and
+interlineations till its mother wouldn't have known it if it had
+had one. It now read as follows:
+
+  "SPIRIT OF THE TENNESSEE PRESS
+
+  "The inveterate liars of the _Semi-Weekly Earthquake_ are
+  evidently endeavoring to palm off upon a noble and chivalrous
+  people another of their vile and brutal falsehoods with regard to
+  that most glorious conception of the nineteenth century, the
+  Ballyhack railroad. The idea that Buzzardville was to be left off
+  at one side originated in their own fulsome brains--or rather in
+  the settlings which _they_ regard as brains. They had better
+  swallow this lie if they want to save their abandoned reptile
+  carcasses the cowhiding they so richly deserve.
+
+  "That ass, Blossom, of the Higginsville _Thunderbolt and
+  Battle-Cry of Freedom_, is down here again sponging at the Van
+  Buren.
+
+  "We observe that the besotted blackguard of the Mud Springs
+  _Morning Howl_ is giving out, with his usual propensity for
+  lying, that Van Werter is not elected. The heaven-born mission of
+  journalism is to disseminate truth: to eradicate error; to
+  educate, refine, and elevate the tone of public morals and
+  manners, and make all men more gentle, more virtuous, more
+  charitable, and in all ways better, and holier, and happier; and
+  yet this black-hearted scoundrel degrades his great office
+  persistently to the dissemination of falsehood, calumny,
+  vituperation, and vulgarity.
+
+  "Blathersville wants a Nicholson pavement--it wants a jail and a
+  poor-house more. The idea of a pavement in a one-horse town
+  composed of two gin-mills, a blacksmith-shop, and that
+  mustard-plaster of a newspaper, the _Daily Hurrah_! The crawling
+  insect, Buckner, who edits the _Hurrah_, is braying about this
+  business with his customary imbecility, and imagining that he is
+  talking sense."
+
+"Now _that_ is the way to write--peppery and to the point.
+Mush-and-milk journalism gives me the fan-tods."
+
+About this time a brick came through the window with a splintering
+crash, and gave me a considerable of a jolt in the back. I moved
+out of range--I began to feel in the way.
+
+The chief said: "That was the Colonel, likely. I've been expecting
+him for two days. He will be up now right away."
+
+He was correct. The Colonel appeared in the door a moment
+afterwards with a dragoon revolver in his hand.
+
+He said: "Sir, have I the honor of addressing the poltroon who
+edits this mangy sheet?"
+
+"You have. Be seated, sir. Be careful of the chair, one of its legs
+is gone. I believe I have the honor of addressing the putrid liar,
+Colonel Blatherskite Tecumseh?"
+
+"Right, sir. I have a little account to settle with you. If you are
+at leisure we will begin."
+
+"I have an article on the 'Encouraging Progress of Moral and
+Intellectual Development in America' to finish, but there is no
+hurry. Begin."
+
+Both pistols rang out their fierce clamor at the same instant. The
+chief lost a lock of his hair, and the Colonel's bullet ended its
+career in the fleshy part of my thigh. The Colonel's left shoulder
+was clipped a little. They fired again. Both missed their men this
+time, but I got my share, a shot in the arm. At the third fire both
+gentlemen were wounded slightly, and I had a knuckle chipped. I
+then said I believed I would go out and take a walk, as this was a
+private matter, and I had a delicacy about participating in it
+further. But both gentlemen begged me to keep my seat, and assured
+me that I was not in the way.
+
+They then talked about the elections and the crops while they
+reloaded, and I fell to tying up my wounds. But presently they
+opened fire again with animation, and every shot took effect--but
+it is proper to remark that five out of the six fell to my share.
+The sixth one mortally wounded the Colonel, who remarked, with fine
+humor, that he would have to say good-morning now, as he had
+business up-town. He then inquired the way to the undertaker's and
+left.
+
+The chief turned to me and said: "I am expecting company to dinner,
+and shall have to get ready. It will be a favor to me if you will
+read proof and attend to the customers."
+
+I winced a little at the idea of attending to the customers, but I
+was too bewildered by the fusillade that was still ringing in my
+ears to think of anything to say.
+
+He continued: "Jones will be here at three--cowhide him. Gillespie
+will call earlier, perhaps--throw him out of the window. Ferguson
+will be along about four--kill him. That is all for to-day, I
+believe. If you have any odd time, you may write a blistering
+article on the police--give the chief inspector rats. The cowhides
+are under the table; weapons in the drawer--ammunition there in the
+corner--lint and bandages up there in the pigeon-holes. In case of
+accident, go to Lancet, the surgeon, down-stairs. He advertises--we
+take it out in trade."
+
+[Illustration: "GILLESPIE HAD CALLED"]
+
+He was gone. I shuddered. At the end of the next three hours I
+had been through perils so awful that all peace of mind and all
+cheerfulness were gone from me. Gillespie had called and thrown
+_me_ out of the window. Jones arrived promptly, and when I got
+ready to do the cowhiding he took the job off my hands. In an
+encounter with a stranger, not in the bill of fare, I had lost my
+scalp. Another stranger, by the name of Thompson, left me a mere
+wreck and ruin of chaotic rags. And at last, at bay in the corner,
+and beset by an infuriated mob of editors, blacklegs, politicians,
+and desperadoes, who raved and swore and flourished their weapons
+about my head till the air shimmered with glancing flashes of
+steel, I was in the act of resigning my berth on the paper when the
+chief arrived, and with him a rabble of charmed and enthusiastic
+friends. Then ensued a scene of riot and carnage such as no human
+pen, or steel one either, could describe. People were shot, probed,
+dismembered, blown up, thrown out of the window. There was a brief
+tornado of murky blasphemy, with a confused and frantic war-dance
+glimmering through it, and then all was over. In five minutes there
+was silence, and the gory chief and I sat alone and surveyed the
+sanguinary ruin that strewed the floor around us.
+
+He said: "You'll like this place when you get used to it."
+
+I said: "I'll have to get you to excuse me; I think maybe I
+might write to suit you after a while; as soon as I had had some
+practice and learned the language I am confident I could. But, to
+speak the plain truth, that sort of energy of expression has its
+inconveniences, and a man is liable to interruption. You see that
+yourself. Vigorous writing is calculated to elevate the public, no
+doubt, but then I do not like to attract so much attention as it
+calls forth. I can't write with comfort when I am interrupted so
+much as I have been to-day. I like this berth well enough, but I
+don't like to be left here to wait on the customers. The
+experiences are novel, I grant you, and entertaining, too, after a
+fashion, but they are not judiciously distributed. A gentleman
+shoots at you through the window and cripples _me_; a bomb-shell
+comes down the stove-pipe for your gratification and sends the
+stove-door down _my_ throat; a friend drops in to swap compliments
+with you, and freckles _me_ with bullet-holes till my skin won't
+hold my principles; you go to dinner, and Jones comes with his
+cowhide, Gillespie throws me out of the window, Thompson tears all
+my clothes off, and an entire stranger takes my scalp with the easy
+freedom of an old acquaintance; and in less than five minutes all
+the blackguards in the country arrive in their war-paint, and
+proceed to scare the rest of me to death with their tomahawks. Take
+it altogether, I never had such a spirited time in all my life as I
+have had to-day. No; I like you, and I like your calm, unruffled
+way of explaining things to the customers, but you see I am not
+used to it. The Southern heart is too impulsive; Southern
+hospitality is too lavish with the stranger. The paragraphs which I
+have written to-day, and into whose cold sentences your masterly
+hand has infused the fervent spirit of Tennessean journalism, will
+wake up another nest of hornets. All that mob of editors will
+come--and they will come hungry, too, and want somebody for
+breakfast. I shall have to bid you adieu. I decline to be present
+at these festivities. I came South for my health; I will go back on
+the same errand, and suddenly. Tennessean journalism is too
+stirring for me."
+
+After which we parted with mutual regret, and I took apartments at
+the hospital.
+
+
+
+
+Nicodemus Dodge--Printer
+
+
+When I was a boy in a printing-office in Missouri, a
+loose-jointed, long-legged, tow-headed, jeans-clad, countrified cub
+of about sixteen lounged in one day, and without removing his hands
+from the depths of his trousers pockets or taking off his faded
+ruin of a slouch hat, whose broken rim hung limp and ragged about
+his eyes and ears like a bug-eaten cabbage-leaf, stared
+indifferently around, then leaned his hip against the editors'
+table, crossed his mighty brogans, aimed at a distant fly from a
+crevice in his upper teeth, laid him low, and said, with composure:
+
+"Whar's the boss?"
+
+"I am the boss," said the editor, following this curious bit of
+architecture wonderingly along up to its clock-face with his eye.
+
+"Don't want anybody fur to learn the business, 'tain't likely?"
+
+"Well, I don't know. Would you like to learn it?"
+
+"Pap's so po' he cain't run me no mo', so I want to git a show
+somers if I kin, 'tain't no diffunce what--I'm strong and hearty,
+and I don't turn my back on no kind of work, hard nur soft."
+
+"Do you think you would like to learn the printing business?"
+
+"Well, I don't re'ly k'yer a durn what I _do_ learn, so's I git a
+chance fur to make my way. I'd jist as soon learn print'n' 's
+anything."
+
+"Can you read?"
+
+"Yes--middlin'."
+
+"Write?"
+
+"Well, I've seed people could lay over me thar."
+
+"Cipher?"
+
+"Not good enough to keep store, I don't reckon, but up as fur as
+twelve-times-twelve I ain't no slouch. 'Tother side of that is what
+gits me."
+
+"Where is your home?"
+
+"I'm f'm old Shelby."
+
+"What's your father's religious denomination?"
+
+"Him? Oh, he's a blacksmith."
+
+"No, no--I don't mean his trade. What's his _religious_
+denomination?"
+
+"_Oh_--I didn't understand you befo'. He's a Freemason."
+
+"No, no; you don't get my meaning yet. What I mean is, does he
+belong to any _church_?"
+
+"_Now_ you're talkin'! Gouldn't make out what you was
+a-tryin' to git through yo' head no way. B'long to a _church_! Why,
+boss, he's be'n the pizenest kind of a Free-will Babtis' for forty
+year. They ain't no pizener ones 'n' what _he_ is. Mighty good man,
+pap is. Everybody says that. If they said any diffrunt they
+wouldn't say it whar _I_ wuz--not _much_ they wouldn't."
+
+"What is your own religion?"
+
+"Well, boss, you've kind o' got me thar--and yit you hain't got me
+so mighty much, nuther. I think 't if a feller he'ps another feller
+when he's in trouble, and don't cuss, and don't do no mean things,
+nur noth'n' he ain' no business to do, and don't spell the
+Saviour's name with a little g, he ain't runnin' no resks--he's
+about as saift as if he b'longed to a church."
+
+"But suppose he did spell it with a little g--what then?"
+
+"Well, if he done it a-purpose, I reckon he wouldn't stand no
+chance,--he _oughtn't_ to have no chance, anyway, I'm most rotten
+certain 'bout that."
+
+"What is your name?"
+
+"Nicodemus Dodge."
+
+"I think maybe you'll do, Nicodemus. We'll give you a trial,
+anyway."
+
+"All right."
+
+"When would you like to begin?"
+
+"Now."
+
+So, within ten minutes after we had first glimpsed this nondescript
+he was one of us, and with his coat off and hard at it.
+
+Beyond that end of our establishment which was farthest from the
+street was a deserted garden, pathless, and thickly grown with the
+bloomy and villanous "jimpson" weed and its common friend the
+stately sunflower. In the midst of this mournful spot was a decayed
+and aged little "frame" house with but one room, one window, and no
+ceiling--it had been a smoke-house a generation before. Nicodemus
+was given this lonely and ghostly den as a bedchamber.
+
+The village smarties recognized a treasure in Nicodemus right
+away--a butt to play jokes on. It was easy to see that he was
+inconceivably green and confiding. George Jones had the glory of
+perpetrating the first joke on him; he gave him a cigar with a
+fire-cracker in it and winked to the crowd to come; the thing
+exploded presently and swept away the bulk of Nicodemus's eyebrows
+and eyelashes. He simply said:
+
+"I consider them kind of seeg'yars dangersome"--and seemed to
+suspect nothing. The next evening Nicodemus waylaid George and
+poured a bucket of ice-water over him.
+
+One day, while Nicodemus was in swimming, Tom McElroy "tied" his
+clothes. Nicodemus made a bonfire of Tom's by way of retaliation.
+
+A third joke was played upon Nicodemus a day or two later--he
+walked up the middle aisle of the village church, Sunday night,
+with a staring hand-bill pinned between his shoulders. The joker
+spent the remainder of the night, after church, in the cellar of a
+deserted house, and Nicodemus sat on the cellar door till towards
+breakfast-time to make sure that the prisoner remembered that if
+any noise was made some rough treatment would be the consequence.
+The cellar had two feet of stagnant water in it, and was bottomed
+with six inches of soft mud.
+
+But I wander from the point. It was the subject of skeletons that
+brought this boy back to my recollection. Before a very long time
+had elapsed, the village smarties began to feel an uncomfortable
+consciousness of not having made a very shining success out of
+their attempts on the simpleton from "old Shelby." Experimenters
+grew scarce and chary. Now the young doctor came to the rescue.
+There was delight and applause when he proposed to scare Nicodemus
+to death, and explained how he was going to do it. He had a noble
+new skeleton--the skeleton of the late and only local celebrity,
+Jimmy Finn, the village drunkard--a grisly piece of property which
+he had bought of Jimmy Finn himself, at auction, for fifty dollars,
+under great competition, when Jimmy lay very sick in the tanyard a
+fortnight before his death. The fifty dollars had gone promptly for
+whiskey and had considerably hurried up the change of ownership in
+the skeleton. The doctor would put Jimmy Finn's skeleton in
+Nicodemus's bed!
+
+This was done--about half-past ten in the evening. About Nicodemus's
+usual bedtime--midnight--the village jokers came creeping stealthily
+through the jimpson weeds and sunflowers towards the lonely frame
+den. They reached the window and peeped in. There sat the long-legged
+pauper, on his bed, in a very short shirt, and nothing more; he was
+dangling his legs contentedly back and forth, and wheezing the music
+of "Camptown Races" out of a paper-overlaid comb which he was pressing
+against his mouth; by him lay a new jews-harp, a new top, a solid
+india-rubber ball, a handful of painted marbles, five pounds of
+"store" candy, and a well-knawed slab of gingerbread as big and as
+thick as a volume of sheet music. He had sold the skeleton to a
+travelling quack for three dollars and was enjoying the result!
+
+[Illustration: "WHEEZING THE MUSIC OF 'CAMPTOWN RACES'"]
+
+
+
+
+Mr. Bloke's Item
+
+
+Our esteemed friend, Mr. John William Bloke, of Virginia City,
+walked into the office where we are sub-editor at a late hour last
+night, with an expression of profound and heartfelt suffering upon
+his countenance, and, sighing heavily, laid the following item
+reverently upon the desk, and walked slowly out again. He paused a
+moment at the door, and seemed struggling to command his feelings
+sufficiently to enable him to speak, and then, nodding his head
+towards his manuscript, ejaculated in a broken voice, "Friend of
+mine--oh! how sad!" and burst into tears. We were so moved at his
+distress that we did not think to call him back and endeavor to
+comfort him until he was gone, and it was too late. The paper had
+already gone to press, but knowing that our friend would consider
+the publication of this item important, and cherishing the hope
+that to print it would afford a melancholy satisfaction to his
+sorrowing heart, we stopped the press at once and inserted it in
+our columns:
+
+  DISTRESSING ACCIDENT.--Last evening, about six o'clock, as Mr.
+  William Schuyler, an old and respectable citizen of South Park,
+  was leaving his residence to go down-town, as has been his usual
+  custom for many years with the exception only of a short interval
+  in the spring of 1850, during which he was confined to his bed by
+  injuries received in attempting to stop a runaway horse by
+  thoughtlessly placing himself directly in its wake and throwing
+  up his hands and shouting, which, if he had done so even a single
+  moment sooner, must inevitably have frightened the animal still
+  more instead of checking its speed, although disastrous enough to
+  himself as it was, and rendered more melancholy and distressing
+  by reason of the presence of his wife's mother, who was there and
+  saw the sad occurrence, notwithstanding it is at least likely,
+  though not necessarily so, that she should be reconnoitring in
+  another direction when incidents occur, not being vivacious and
+  on the lookout, as a general thing, but even the reverse, as her
+  own mother is said to have stated, who is no more, but died in
+  the full hope of a glorious resurrection, upward of three years
+  ago, aged eighty-six, being a Christian woman and without guile,
+  as it were, or property, in consequence of the fire of 1849,
+  which destroyed every single thing she had in the world. But such
+  is life. Let us all take warning by this solemn occurrence, and
+  let us endeavor so to conduct ourselves that when we come to die
+  we can do it. Let us place our hands upon our heart, and say with
+  earnestness and sincerity that from this day forth we will beware
+  of the intoxicating bowl.--_First edition of the Californian._
+
+The head editor has been in here raising the mischief, and tearing
+his hair and kicking the furniture about, and abusing me like a
+pickpocket. He says that every time he leaves me in charge of the
+paper for half an hour, I get imposed upon by the first infant or
+the first idiot that comes along. And he says that that distressing
+item of Mr. Bloke's is nothing but a lot of distressing bosh, and
+has no point to it, and no sense in it, and no information in it,
+and that there was no sort of necessity for stopping the press to
+publish it.
+
+Now all this comes of being good-hearted. If I had been as
+unaccommodating and unsympathetic as some people, I would have told
+Mr. Bloke that I wouldn't receive his communication at such a late
+hour; but no, his snuffling distress touched my heart, and I jumped
+at the chance of doing something to modify his misery. I never read
+his item to see whether there was anything wrong about it, but
+hastily wrote the few lines which preceded it, and sent it to the
+printers. And what has my kindness done for me? It has done nothing
+but bring down upon me a storm of abuse and ornamental blasphemy.
+
+Now I will read that item myself, and see if there is any
+foundation for all this fuss. And if there is, the author of it
+shall hear from me.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have read it, and I am bound to admit that it seems a little
+mixed at a first glance. However, I will peruse it once more.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have read it again, and it does really seem a good deal more
+mixed than ever.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have read it over five times, but if I can get at the meaning of
+it, I wish I may get my just deserts. It won't bear analysis. There
+are things about it which I cannot understand at all. It don't say
+what ever became of William Schuyler. It just says enough about him
+to get one interested in his career, and then drops him. Who is
+William Schuyler, anyhow, and what part of South Park did he live in,
+and if he started down-town at six o'clock, did he ever get there,
+and if he did, did anything happen to him? Is _he_ the individual
+that met with the "distressing accident"? Considering the elaborate
+circumstantiality of detail observable in the item, it seems to me
+that it ought to contain more information than it does. On the
+contrary, it is obscure--and not only obscure, but utterly
+incomprehensible. Was the breaking of Mr. Schuyler's leg, fifteen
+years ago, the "distressing accident" that plunged Mr. Bloke into
+unspeakable grief, and caused him to come up here at dead of night
+and stop our press to acquaint the world with the circumstance? Or
+did the "distressing accident" consist in the destruction of
+Schuyler's mother-in-law's property in early times? Or did it consist
+in the death of that person herself three years ago (albeit it does
+not appear that she died by accident)? In a word, what _did_ that
+"distressing accident" consist in? What did that drivelling ass of a
+Schuyler stand _in the wake_ of a runaway horse for, with his
+shouting and gesticulating, if he wanted to stop him? And how the
+mischief could he get run over by a horse that had already passed
+beyond him? And what are we to take "warning" by? And how is this
+extraordinary chapter of incomprehensibilities going to be a "lesson"
+to us? And, above all, what has the intoxicating "bowl" got to do
+with it, anyhow? It is not stated that Schuyler drank, or that his
+wife drank, or that his mother-in-law drank, or that the horse
+drank--wherefore, then, the reference to the intoxicating bowl? It
+does seem to me that if Mr. Bloke had let the intoxicating bowl alone
+himself, he never would have got into so much trouble about this
+exasperating imaginary accident. I have read this absurd item over
+and over again, with all its insinuating plausibility, until my head
+swims, but I can make neither head nor tail of it. There certainly
+seems to have been an accident of some kind or other, but it is
+impossible to determine what the nature of it was, or who was the
+sufferer by it. I do not like to do it, but I feel compelled to
+request that the next time anything happens to one of Mr. Bloke's
+friends, he will append such explanatory notes to his account of it
+as will enable me to find out what sort of an accident it was and whom
+it happened to. I had rather all his friends should die than that I
+should be driven to the verge of lunacy again in trying to cipher out
+the meaning of another such production as the above.
+
+[Illustration: "I HAVE READ THIS ABSURD ITEM OVER"]
+
+
+
+
+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 office, towards sundown,
+a group of men and boys at the foot of the stairs dispersed with
+one impulse, and gave me passageway, 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 township alone by being pulled in a
+half-ripe condition, when, if they had sent a 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 towards 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."
+
+[Illustration: "A LONG CADAVEROUS CREATURE"]
+
+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
+  corn-stalks 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 towards 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 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 polecat 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 to take another holiday. Oh! why didn't you _tell_
+me you didn't know anything 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 warwhoop 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 campfire 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 a 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 poor-house. _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 watermelon-tree from a peach-vine to
+save his life. _You_ are the loser by this rupture, not me,
+Pie-plant. Adios."
+
+I then left.
+
+
+
+
+The Killing of Julius Caesar "Localized"
+
+    _Being the only true and reliable account ever published; taken from
+    the "Roman Daily Evening Fasces," of the date of that tremendous
+    occurrence._
+
+
+Nothing in the world affords a newspaper reporter so much
+satisfaction as gathering up the details of a bloody and mysterious
+murder, and writing them up with aggravating circumstantiality. He
+takes a living delight in this labor of love--for such it is to
+him, especially if he knows that all the other papers have gone to
+press, and his will be the only one that will contain the dreadful
+intelligence. A feeling of regret has often come over me that I was
+not reporting in Rome when Caesar was killed--reporting on an
+evening paper, and the only one in the city, and getting at least
+twelve hours ahead of the morning-paper boys with this most
+magnificent "item" that ever fell to the lot of the craft. Other
+events have happened as startling as this, but none that possessed
+so peculiarly all the characteristics of the favorite "item" of the
+present day, magnified into grandeur and sublimity by the high
+rank, fame, and social and political standing of the actors in it.
+
+However, as I was not permitted to report Caesar's assassination in
+the regular way, it has at least afforded me rare satisfaction to
+translate the following able account of it from the original Latin
+of the _Roman Daily Evening Fasces_ of that date--second edition.
+
+  "Our usually quiet city of Rome was thrown into a state of wild
+  excitement yesterday by the occurrence of one of those bloody
+  affrays which sicken the heart and fill the soul with fear, while
+  they inspire all thinking men with forebodings for the future of
+  a city where human life is held so cheaply, and the gravest laws
+  are so openly set at defiance. As the result of that affray, it
+  is our painful duty, as public journalists, to record the death
+  of one of our most esteemed citizens--a man whose name is known
+  wherever this paper circulates, and whose fame it has been our
+  pleasure and our privilege to extend, and also to protect from
+  the tongue of slander and falsehood, to the best of our poor
+  ability. We refer to Mr. J. Caesar, the Emperor-elect.
+
+  "The facts of the case, as nearly as our reporter could
+  determine them from the conflicting statements of eyewitnesses,
+  were about as follows:--The affair was an election row, of
+  course. Nine-tenths of the ghastly butcheries that disgrace the
+  city nowadays grow out of the bickerings and jealousies and
+  animosities engendered by these accursed elections. Rome would be
+  the gainer by it if her very constables were elected to serve a
+  century; for in our experience we have never even been able to
+  choose a dog-pelter without celebrating the event with a dozen
+  knockdowns and a general cramming of the station-house with
+  drunken vagabonds overnight. It is said that when the immense
+  majority for Caesar at the polls in the market was declared the
+  other day, and the crown was offered to that gentleman, even his
+  amazing unselfishness in refusing it three times was not
+  sufficient to save him from the whispered insults of such men as
+  Casca, of the Tenth Ward, and other hirelings of the disappointed
+  candidate, hailing mostly from the Eleventh and Thirteenth and
+  other outside districts, who were overheard speaking ironically
+  and contemptuously of Mr. Caesar's conduct upon that occasion.
+
+  "We are further informed that there are many among us who think
+  they are justified in believing that the assassination of Julius
+  Caesar was a put-up thing--a cut-and-dried arrangement, hatched by
+  Marcus Brutus and a lot of his hired roughs, and carried out only
+  too faithfully according to the programme. Whether there be good
+  grounds for this suspicion or not, we leave to the people to
+  judge for themselves, only asking that they will read the
+  following account of the sad occurrence carefully and
+  dispassionately before they render that judgment.
+
+  "The Senate was already in session, and Caesar was coming down
+  the street towards the Capitol, conversing with some personal
+  friends, and followed, as usual, by a large number of citizens.
+  Just as he was passing in front of Demosthenes & Thucydides'
+  drug-store, he was observing casually to a gentleman, who, our
+  informant thinks, is a fortune-teller, that the Ides of March
+  were come. The reply was, 'Yes, they are come, but not gone yet.'
+  At this moment Artemidorus stepped up and passed the time of day,
+  and asked Caesar to read a schedule or a tract or something of the
+  kind, which he had brought for his perusal. Mr. Decius Brutus
+  also said something about an 'humble suit' which _he_ wanted
+  read. Artemidorus begged that attention might be paid to his
+  first, because it was of personal consequence to Caesar. The
+  latter replied that what concerned himself should be read last,
+  or words to that effect. Artemidorus begged and beseeched him to
+  read the paper instantly.[1] However, Caesar shook him off, and
+  refused to read any petition in the street. He then entered the
+  Capitol, and the crowd followed him.
+
+  "About this time the following conversation was overheard, and we
+  consider that, taken in connection with the events which
+  succeeded it, it bears an appalling significance: Mr. Papilius
+  Lena remarked to George W. Cassius (commonly known as the 'Nobby
+  Boy of the Third Ward'), a bruiser in the pay of the Opposition,
+  that he hoped his enterprise to-day might thrive; and when
+  Cassius asked, 'What enterprise?' he only closed his left eye
+  temporarily and said with simulated indifference, 'Fare you
+  well,' and sauntered towards Caesar. Marcus Brutus, who is
+  suspected of being the ringleader of the band that killed Caesar,
+  asked what it was that Lena had said. Cassius told him, and
+  added, in a low tone, '_I fear our purpose is discovered._'
+
+  "Brutus told his wretched accomplice to keep an eye on Lena,
+  and a moment after Cassius urged that lean and hungry vagrant,
+  Casca, whose reputation here is none of the best, to be sudden
+  for _he feared prevention_. He then turned to Brutus, apparently
+  much excited, and asked what should be done, and swore that
+  either he or Caesar _should never turn back_--he would kill
+  himself first. At this time Caesar was talking to some of the
+  back-country members about the approaching fall elections, and
+  paying little attention to what was going on around him. Billy
+  Trebonius got into conversation with the people's friend and
+  Caesar's--Mark Antony--and under some pretence or other got him
+  away, and Brutus, Decius, Casca, Cinna, Metellus Cimber, and
+  others of the gang of infamous desperadoes that infest Rome at
+  present, closed around the doomed Caesar. Then Metellus Cimber
+  knelt down and begged that his brother might be recalled from
+  banishment, but Caesar rebuked him for his fawning conduct, and
+  refused to grant his petition. Immediately, at Cimber's request,
+  first Brutus and then Cassius begged for the return of the
+  banished Publius; but Caesar still refused. He said he could not
+  be moved; that he was as fixed as the North Star, and proceeded
+  to speak in the most complimentary terms of the firmness of that
+  star and its steady character. Then he said he was like it, and
+  he believed he was the only man in the country that was;
+  therefore, since he was 'constant' that Cimber should be
+  banished, he was also 'constant' that he should stay banished,
+  and he'd be hanged if he didn't keep him so!
+
+  "Instantly seizing upon this shallow pretext for a fight,
+  Casca sprang at Caesar and struck him with a dirk. Caesar grabbing
+  him by the arm with his right hand, and launching a blow straight
+  from the shoulder with his left that sent the reptile bleeding to
+  the earth. He then backed up against Pompey's statue, and squared
+  himself to receive his assailants. Cassius and Cimber and Cinna
+  rushed upon him with their daggers drawn, and the former
+  succeeded in inflicting a wound upon his body; but before he
+  could strike again, and before either of the others could strike
+  at all, Caesar stretched the three miscreants at his feet with as
+  many blows of his powerful fist. By this time the Senate was in
+  an indescribable uproar; the throng of citizens in the lobbies
+  had blockaded the doors in their frantic efforts to escape from
+  the building, the sergeant-at-arms and his assistants were
+  struggling with the assassins, venerable senators had cast aside
+  their encumbering robes, and were leaping over benches and flying
+  down the aisles in wild confusion towards the shelter of the
+  committee-rooms, and a thousand voices were shouting 'Po-lice!
+  Po-lice!' in discordant tones that rose above the frightful din
+  like shrieking winds above the roaring of a tempest. And amid it
+  all, great Caesar stood with his back against the statue, like a
+  lion at bay, and fought his assailants weaponless and hand to
+  hand, with the defiant bearing and the unwavering courage which
+  he had shown before on many a bloody field. Billy Trebonius and
+  Caius Legarius struck him with their daggers and fell, as their
+  brother-conspirators before them had fallen. But at last, when
+  Caesar saw his old friend Brutus step forward armed with a
+  murderous knife, it is said he seemed utterly overpowered with
+  grief and amazement, and dropping his invincible left arm by his
+  side, he hid his face in the folds of his mantle and received the
+  treacherous blow without an effort to stay the hand that gave it.
+  He only said, '_Et tu, Brute?_' and fell lifeless on the marble
+  pavement.
+
+  "We learn that the coat deceased had on when he was killed was
+  the same one he wore in his tent on the afternoon of the day he
+  overcame the Nervii, and that when it was removed from the corpse
+  it was found to be cut and gashed in no less than seven different
+  places. There was nothing in the pockets. It will be exhibited at
+  the coroner's inquest, and will be damning proof of the fact of
+  the killing. These latter facts may be relied on, as we get them
+  from Mark Antony, whose position enables him to learn every item
+  of news connected with the one subject of absorbing interest of
+  to-day.
+
+  [Illustration: "THERE WAS NOTHING IN THE POCKETS"]
+
+  "LATER.--While the coroner was summoning a jury, Mark Antony and
+  other friends of the late Caesar got hold of the body, and lugged
+  it off to the Forum, and at last accounts Antony and Brutus were
+  making speeches over it and raising such a row among the people
+  that, as we go to press, the chief of police is satisfied there
+  is going to be a riot, and is taking measures accordingly."
+
+
+[Footnote 1: Mark that: It is hinted by William Shakespeare, who
+saw the beginning and the end of the unfortunate affray, that this
+"schedule" was simply a note discovering to Caesar that a plot was
+brewing to take his life.]
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Editorial Wild Oats, by Mark Twain
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EDITORIAL WILD OATS ***
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