The Plymouth Democrat. (Plymouth, Ind.) 1869-1941, 1870-06-09
MISCELLANEOUS.
A C0CPLE OF SAD EXPERIENCES.

which | said was going to edit an aeri
cultural department in this magazine,
certainly did not desire to deceive any
body L had not the remotest desire tt
play upon any ones confidence with
practlfal joke. for he is a pitiful cree turt
indeed who viii degrade the dignity of his
humanity to the cOntTiving of the witless
inventions that go by that name | pur
pOsely wrote the thing as absurdly and
as exfravagantly as it could be written, in
order to be sure and not mislead hurried
or needless readers: for spoke of launch
ing a friumphal bG'ys upon desert, and
planting a tree of prosperity in ntne-a
tree wh'SA frIqraf7ce should slGke the ttirst
or the 79ked, ard whose branches should
spread abroad till they pqsled the sbO1es Ot
etc, etc tn ought that manifest lunacy
IKE mat wovld protect the reader Buf
10 make assurance absolute, and show that
uld not a'ld could not seriously mean to
attempt an AqricmturG Department,
stated distinctly in my postscript that ]
6n0 not hHOso anything about Agriculture
but, a'a 5, right there is where | made
my Wcrs's mistake-tor that remark seems
10 oave recommended my proposed Agri
culture more than anything else. 1t lets
NIUE light in on me, and l fancy per-
celve that the farmers feel little bored
som fines by the Oracular profunditv OF
agr Cultural editors who "know it all
In t$ct, one of my correspondents sug.
: -sfs thls (for that unhappy sauib has
teiugei me With letters about potatoes
sDI caooages, and hominy and vermicelli,
and maccsrOni, and all the other fruits,
cereals and vegetables that ever grew on
earth; and if [ get through answering
questions about the best way of raising
these things before / go raving crazy, /
shall be thankful, and shall never write
obscurity for fun any more)
Snail tell the reason why / have unin.
tentionally succeeded in fOohng so many
people? 1t is because some OF them read
only a little of the squib 1 wrote, and
jumped to the conclusion that it was seri-
Gus, and The rest did not read it at all, but
heard of my agricultural venture at sec
ond-hand. Those cases could not guard
against. of course. To write a burlesuue
so wild that its pretended facts will not be
accepted III perfect good faith by some
body, Is very nearly an impossible thing
10 do. Ii Is because, in some instances,
the reader is a person who never tries to
deceive anybody himself, and therefore is
not expecting one to wantonly practice a
deception upon him and in this case the
only person dishOnOred is the man who
wrote the burlesque In other instances
the .'nub or moral of the burlesque-if
It's Object be to enforce q truth-escapes
notice IN the Superior glare of something
III the Dody OF the burlesque itself And
very OFTEN tpis moral" Is tagged on at
me oOttor,, and the reader, not knowing
mat 1t IS the key of the whole thing, and
'ie only important paragraph in the arti-
cle, TRANQUILITY turns up his nose at it, and
leaves 1t unread. One can deliver satire
wItn telling force through the insidious
medium OF a travesty, and so bury it from
the readers sight, and leave him a joked
and deirauded victim, when the honest
Intent was to add TO either his knowledge
or his wisdom. 1 bave had deal of ex-
perlence In burlesQues and their unfortu
nate aptress to deceive the public, and
this Is why | tried hard to make that ag-
ricultnral one so broad and so perfectly
paipabie that even one eyed potato could
see IL and yet, as speak the solemn
truth, 1t fooled one of The ablest agricul-
iurdi EDITORS in America.
THE PETRIFIED MAN.
Now, to show how really hard it is TO
foist "A moral or truth upon an unsuspect-
ing public through burlesque without
entirely and absurtly missing ones mark,
will here set down two experiences Of
any own in this thing. In the fall of 1862,
IN Nevada and California, the people got
30 running wild about extraordinary
pctrIiactiOns and other natural maryels
One could scarcely pick up a paper with
out Inning IN IL one or two glOrified dis
c0geries of this kind. The mania was
becoming little rid culous. was
bran-new local editor in Virginia CITY,
and / felt called upon to destroy this
growing evil; We all have our benignant,
fa.herly moods at one time or another
suppose. | chose to kill the petrifactiOn
mania with a delicate, very delicate,
satire. But maybe it was altogether too
delicate, for nobody ever perceived the
satire part of it at all. | put my scheme
in the shape of the discovery of re-
markable petrified man. | had tempo
rary falling out with Mr.. Sewall, the new
Coroner and Justice OF the Peace of
Humboldt, and thought might as well
touch him up little at the same time and
make him ridiculous, and thus combine
pleasure with business SO l told, in
patient. belief compelling detail all about
the finding of petrified man at Gravelly
Ford (exactly hundred and twenty
miles, over breakneck mountain trail,
from where Sewell lived); how all the
savants in the Immediate neighbor-
hood had been to examine it
Git was notorious that there was not a liv
ing creature within fifty miles of there,
exceUt few starving indians, some Grip
pied grasshOppers, and four or five buz
yards out of meat and too feeble to get
away; how those savants all pronounced
the petrified man to have been in state
of complete petrifaction for over ten
generations; and then, with a serious
ness that | ought to have been ashamed
to assume, I stated that as soon as Mr.
Sewall heard the news, he summoned a
jury, mouted his mule, and posted off,
with noble reverence for official duty, On
That awful five days journey, through
alkali, sage brush, peril of body and i'm
minent starvation, to hold an inquest on
this man that had been dead and turned
to everlasting stone for more than three
hundred years. And then my hand being
"in,' so to speak, ! went on, with the
same unflinching gravity, to state that the
jury returned a verdict that deceased came
u his death from protracted exposure
This only moved me to- higher flights OF
imagination, and | said that the jury, with
that charity so characteristic of prisoners,
then dug grave. and were about 10 give
the petriied man Christian burial. when
they found that for ages limestone .edi
ment had been trickllng down the face of
the stone against which he was sitting.
and this stuff had run under him and ce
mented him fast to the bedrock !" that
the jury tthey were all silver -miners) can
vass the difficulty moment, and then
got out their powder and fuse, and pro-
ceeded To drill hole under him, in order
to UeSt him from his position, when Mr..
Sewall, with that delicacy so character
istic of him, forbade them, observing that
it would be little less than a sacrilege t.
do such a thing" From beginning to end
the " Petrified Man" squib was a string
of roaring absurdities, albeit they were
told with an unfair pretence of truth thai
even imposed upon me to some extent
snd was in some danger of believing in