"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 tip-toeing toward me
till he was within long reaching distance of me, when he stopped, and,
after scanning my face with intense interest for a while, drew a folded
copy of our paper from his bosom, and said:
"There, you wrote that. Read it to me--quick! Relieve me. I suffer."
I read as follows: and, as the sentences fell from my lips, I could see
the relief come, I could see the drawn muscles relax, and the anxiety go
out of the face, and rest and peace steal over the features like the
merciful moonlight over a desolate landscape:
"The guano is a fine bird, but great care is necessary in rearing it. It
should not be imported earlier than June or later than September. In the
winter it should be kept in a warm place, where it can hatch out its
young.
"It is evident that we are to have a backward season for grain.
Therefore it will be well for the farmer to begin setting out his
corn-stalks and planting his buckwheat cakes in July instead of August.
"Concerning the Pumpkin.--This berry is a favourite with the natives of
the interior of New England, who prefer it to the gooseberry for the
making of fruit-cake, and who likewise give it the preference over the
raspberry for feeding cows, as being more filling and fully as
satisfying. The pumpkin is the only esculent of the orange family that
will thrive in the North, except the gourd and one or two varieties of
the squash. But the custom of planting it in the front yard with the
shrubbery is fast going out of vogue, for it is now generally conceded
that the pumpkin as a shade tree is a failure.
"Now, as the warm weather approaches, and the ganders begin to spawn--"
The excited listener sprang toward me to shake hands, and said:
"There, there--that will do. I know I am all right now, because you have
read it just as I did, word for word. But, stranger, when I first read
it this morning, I said to myself, I never, never believed it before,
notwithstanding my friends kept me under watch so strict, but now I
believe I _am_ crazy; and with that I fetched a howl that you might have
heard two miles, and started out to kill somebody--because, you know, I
knew it would come to that sooner or later, and so I might as well
begin. I read one of them paragraphs over again, so as to be certain,
and then I burned my house down and started. I have crippled several
people, and have got one fellow up a tree, where 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."
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 those 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, heaven and earth, friend! if you had made the acquiring
of ignorance the study of your life, you could not have graduated with
higher honour 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 favour 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 war-whoop from a wigwam, and who
never have had to run a footrace with a tomahawk, or pluck arrows out of
the several members of their families to build the evening camp-fire
with. Who write the temperance appeals, and clamour 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-coloured novel line,
sensation-drama line, city-editor line, and finally fall back on
agriculture as a temporary reprieve from the poorhouse. _You_ try to
tell _me_ anything about the newspaper business! Sir, I have been
through it from Alpha to Omaha, and I tell you that the less a man knows
the bigger 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 run your circulation up to twenty thousand copies, and if I
had had two more weeks I'd have done it. And I'd have given you the best
class of readers that ever an agricultural paper had--not a farmer in
it, nor a solitary individual who could tell a water-melon tree from a
peach-vine to save his life. _You_ are the loser by this rupture, not
me, Pie-plant. Adios."