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Show MAIllt TWAIN'S KI11ST KXPKHI-K.CK KXPKHI-K.CK IN JOUHN AL.I8M. I wan a very smart child at tlio age of lliirtcon an unusually smart child, I thought tit that time. It was then that 1 did my tirat uow.papcr scribbling, scrib-bling, and, most unexpectedly to mo, it stirrod up a tino sensation in tho community. It did, indued, and I was very proud of it, too. 1 was a printer's "devil," and a progressive pro-gressive and aspiring one. My uncle hud mo on his paper (tho Weekly Hannibal Journal) two dollars a year in advance SOU subscribers, and they paid in eord-wood, cabbages, and un-murketablo un-murketablo turnips, and on a lucky Summer's day he lelt town to bo gone a week, and a:-kcd mo if I thought I could edit one issua of tho paper judiciously. judici-ously. Ah, didn't I want to tryl Ilin-ton Ilin-ton was the editor of tho rival paper, llo had lately been jilted, and one Might a friend found an open note on tho poor leilow's bed, in which he stated that ho could no longer endure life and had drowned himself in Bear creek. The friend ran down there and discovered Hinton wading back to shore! He had concluded he wouldn't. Tho village was full of it for several days, but llinton did not suspect it. 1 thought this was a tine opportunity. I wrote an elaborately wretched account of tho wholo matter, and then illustrated illustra-ted it with villainous cuts engraved on the bottom of wooden type with a jack-kniib one of them a picture of Hinton wading out into the creek in his shirt, with a lantern, sounding the depth of tho water with a walking-stick. walking-stick. 1 thought it was desperately tunny, and was densely unconscious that there was any moral obliquity about such a publication. Being satisfied with this effort, I looked about for other worlds to conquer, and it struck me that it would mako good, interesting matter to charge the editor of a neighboring country paper with a piece of gratuitous gratuit-ous rascality, and "see him squirm I" I did it, putting the article in the form of a parody on tho "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 de-serve 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 Jour-nal about his newest conquest His rhymes for my week were headed "Mary in II 1," meaning Mary in Hannibal, of course. But while betting 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 foot-note at the bottom, thus : "Ve will let this thing pass just this once, but we wish J. Gordon Runnels to understand un-derstand distinctly that we have a character to sustain, and from this time forth, when he wants to commune com-mune with his friends in h 1, he must select some other medium than the columns of this journal." The paper came out, and I never knew any little thing to attract so much attention as those playful trifles of min3. For once the Hannibal Journal was in demand a novelty it had not experienced before. The whole town was stirred. Hinton dropped in with a double-barreled 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 weut 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 war-whoop 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. - 1( My uncle was very angry when he got back unreasonably so, I thought, considering what an impetus I had given the paper, and considering aho that gratitude for his preservation ought to have been npppermost in his mind, inasmuch as by his delay he had so wonderfully escaped dissection, tomahawking, tom-ahawking, libel, and getting his head shot off. But he softened when he looked at the account anc saw hat I had actually booked, ti6 unparalleled num berof 'thirty-three new subscribers, and had the vegetables to show for it, oord-wood, oord-wood, cabbages, heaps and unsaleable turnips enough to run the family for two years I |
