The Hartford herald., 1875-12-22
Mark Twain's First Experience I'm
Journalism.

Mark Twain's First Experience in
journalism.
] was very smart child at the age
of thirteen, an. unusually smart child,
1 thought at the time. 1t was then
that 1 did my first newspaper scrib-
bling. and. most unexpectedly to me
it stirred up quite sensation in the
community. It.sdid, indeed, and
was very proud oft, too.
I was printers "devil," and pro,
gressive and aspiring one. My uncle
had me on his paper (the Weekly
Hannibal Journal. two dollars a year
in advance-fve hundred subscribers,
and that paid in cord-wood, cabbages
and unmarbetable turnips) and on a
lucky summers day he left town to be
gone week, and asked me if / thought
/ could edit one issue of the paper ju-
diciously. All, didn't 1 want to try it :
Hinton was the editor of the rival pa
per. He was lately Tilted, and one
night friend found an open letter in
the poor fellows 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 Hinton wading back to
the shore. He had concluded he
wouldn't. 9ETT "a g
The village was full of it for several
days, but Hinton did not suspect it. 1
thought this was e fine opportunity. i
wrote an elaborately wretched account
of the whole affair, and then illustrated
it with villainous wood cuts engraved
on the bottom ofwood type with jack
knife, one of them picture of Hinton
walking out in the creek in his shirt,
with lantern sounding the depths of
the water with walking stick.
thought it was desperately funny,
and was densely unconscious that there
was any moral obliquity about such a
publication. Being satisfied with the
effort, looked about for other worlds
to conquer, and it struck me that it
would make good interesting matter
to charge the oditor of a neighboring
county paper with a agratuitous piece of
rascality and see him squirmI 1 did
it, putting the article in the form of a
parody on the burial of "Sir John
Moore" and a crude parody it was,
too.
Then | lampooned two prominent
citizens outrageously-not because they
had done anything to deserved it, but
because 1 thought it my duty to make
the paper lively.
Next I gently touched up the newest
stranger-the lion of the day, the gor-
geous journeyman tailor from Quincy.
He was simpering coxcomb of the
first water, and the "loudest" dressed
man in town. He was an inveterate
lady killer. Every week he wrote
sloshy poetry" for the Journal about
his newest conquest. His rhymes for
my weekwere headed, Mary in H"
meaning Mary in Hannibal, of course.
But, while setting up the piece, was
suddenly .riven from head to heel by
what 1 regarded as a perfect thunder
bolt of humor, and compressed it into
a snappy foot note at the bottom thus:
1--WE will let this thing pass, just this
once; but we want Mr.. Gordon Runs
ner to understand distinctly that We
have character to sustain, and from
this time forth when he wants to COM
municate with his friends in h-ll,
he must select some other medium than
this journal.
The paper came out, and I never
knew anything to attract so much at
tention as those playful trifes of mine.
For once the Hannibal Journal was in
demand-a novelty it had not expert
enced before. The whole town was
stirred. Hinton dropped in with
double-barrel shot gun early in the fore-
noon. When he found it was an in>
fant, as he called me, that had done
the damage, hepulled my ears and then
went away; but he threw up the sits
Al l. ~