Semi-weekly south Kentuckian. [volume] (Hopkinsville, Ky.) 1883-1889, 1886-06-15
MARX TWAIN AS A PRINTER
The Printer Of To-Day and He Of
Thirty-Ave Years Ago.
New York Sun. |

MAJ W atil was OHO vi lHC dlltI
dinner speakers at the banquet al
Delmonico's, New York, of the Typo
thete association, club of wealthy
printers and publishers. Ills text
was, "The Composilor." This is
what he said:
"The cliairman's historical remi-
niscences of Gutenberg have caused
me TO fall into "reminiscences, for l
myself am something of an antiquity.
Laughter. All things change in
the procession of years, and it may
be that am among strangers. 1t
may be that the printer of to-day is
not the printer of thirty-fve years
ago. ] was no stranger TO him. |
knew him well. l built the fire for
him in the winter mornings;
brought his water from the village
pump; swept out his office; picked
up his type from under his stand !;
and, If he was there to see, l put the
good type in his case and the broken
ones among the 'hellmatter;' and if
he wasn't there TO see, / dumped it
all with the 'pi' on the imposing
stone-fOr that was the furtive fash
ion of the cub, and l was a cub. l
wetted down the paper Saturdays,
l turned it Sundays-for this was
country weekly; l rolled, l washed
the forms, | folded the papers, car
ried them around in the disagreeable
dawn Thursday mornings. The car
rier was then an object of interest to
all the dogs in town. If he had saved
up all the bites l ever received,
could keep M. Pasteur busy for
year. l enveloped the papers that
were for the native had 100 town
subscribers and $50 country ones !;
the town subscribers paid in groceries
and the country ones in cabbage and
cordwood-when they paid at all,
which was merely sometimes, and
then we always stated the fact in the
paper, and gave them a puff; and if
we forgot it they stopped the paper.
Every man on the town list helped
edit the thing; that is, he gave Or
ders as to how it was 10 be edited :;
dictated its opinions, marked out its
course for 1t, and every time the boss
failed 10 connect, lie stopped his pa
per. We were just infested with
critics and we tried to satisfy them
all over. We had one subscriber
who paid cash, and lie was more
trouble to us than all the rest. lie
bought us once year, body and soul,
for ~. lie used to modify our poll
tics every which way, and he made
lis change our religion four times in
five years. If we ever tried to reason
with him, lie would threaten to stop
his paper, and, of course, that meant
bankruptcy and destruction. That
man used TO write articles column
and half long, loaded long primer,
and sign them Junius,' or Veritas' or
'Vox Populi, or some other high
sounding rot, and, then, after it was
set up, he would come in and say lie
had changed his mind-which was
gilded figure of speech, because lie
hadn't any-and order it to be left
out. We couldn't stand such waste
as that. Well, we did have one or
two kinds of bogus Whenever
there was barbecue, or circus, or
a baptizing, we knocked off for half
day; and then, to make up for
short matter, we would turn over
ads.'-turn over the whole page and
duplicate it. The other bogus was
deep philosophical stuff, which we
judged nobody ever read so we kept
a galley of it standing, and kept on
slapping the same old patches of it
in, every now and then, till it got
dangerous. Also, in the early days
of the telegraph, we used to econo-
mize on the news. We picked out
the items that were pointless and
barren of information, and stood
them on a galley, and changed the
dates and localities, and used them
over and over again till the public
interest in them was worn TO the
bone. We marked the ads, but we
seldom paid any attention to the
marks afterward; so the life of a i'd
adj. and IF ad. was equally eternal.
] have seen a It'd adj. notice of
shcrifrs sale still booming serenely
along two years after the sale was
over, the sheriff dead, and the whole
circumstance become ancient history.
Most of the yearly ads. were patent
medicine stereotypes, and we used
10 fence with them. Life was easy
with us; If we pied form we sus-
pended till next week, and we always
suspended every now and then when
the fishing was good, and explained
it by the illness of the editor, a paltry
excuse, because that kind of paper
wasjust as well off with sick editor
as a well one, and better off with
dead one than with either of them,
lie was full of blessed egotism and
placid self-importance but he didn't
know as much as Sem quad. lie
never set any type except in the rush
of the last day, and then he would
smOuch all the poetry, and leave the
rest to jeff for solid takes. lie wrote
with impressive flatulence and soar
ing confidence upon the vastest sub
jccts; but putting aims gifts Of we'd
ding cake, salty ice cream, abnormal
water1nelons, and sweet potatoes the
size of your leg was his best hold. lie
was always a poet-a kind Of poet Of
the carriers address breed-and when
ever his intellect suppurated, and he
read the result 10 the printers and
asked for their opinion, they were