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$Unique_ID{bob01492}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Sketches, Old And New
My First Literary Venture}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{paper
thought
higgins
}
$Date{1893}
$Log{}
Title: Sketches, Old And New
Book: My First Literary Venture
Author: Twain, Mark
Date: 1893
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 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 cordwood, 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 villainous 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."
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 foot-note 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 no
experienced before. The whole town was stirred. Higgins dropped in with a
double-barreled shot-gun early in the forenoon. When he found 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 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 unparalled
number of thirty-three new subscribers, and had the vegetables to show for it,
cordwood, cabbage, beans, and unsalable turnips enough to run the family for
two years!