"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."