The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1886-02-24
f: MARK TWAIN.
: His ReeolectoDs as a. Cub Printer.
He Delights the. Typotheate with Remin-
iscence of His Boyhood Spent ina
Country Printing once.


hearers by the following, in answer to the
toast 1.-THE Compassion"
Il am staggered by the compliments
which have been lavished and poured out on
me by my friend on my right (Mr. Bailey. /
am as proud of this compliment as / am stag
gered. 1t is uncommon in my experience.
1t is the first time that anybody in my ex-
perience has stood up in the presence of
large and respectable assemblage of gentle
men like this, and confess that 1 have told
the truth once II i could return the CON-
pliment I would do it. Laughter at Mr..
Bailey's expense.]
1.-THE chairman's historical Renaissance
of Gutenberg have caused me to fall into
"reminiscences, for 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 printers of to-day is not the
printer of thirty-five years ago. was no
ST. anger TO him. / knew him well. / built
his 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, put the good type in his case and
the broken ones among the hell NATTER
and If he wasn't there to see, l dumped it
all with the 'pi' on the imposing stone-for
that was the furtive fashion of the cub and
i was cub. / wetted down the paper
Saturdays, turned it Sundays-for this was
country weekly; i rolled, 1 washed the
rollers washed the forms, l folded the pa
pers, carried them around at dawn Thurs
day mornings; j enveloped the papers that
were for the native had 100 town SUBJ
scribers and $50 country ones; the town SUBJ
scribers paid in groceries and the country
ones in cabbages and cordwood-when they
paid at all, which was merely sometimes
and then we always stated the fact in the pa
per, and gave them puff; and if we forgot
it they stopped the paper. Every man on
the town list helped edit the thing; that is,
he gave orders as to how it was to be edited ;
dictated its opinions, marked out its course
for it, and every time the boss failed to con-
meet
HE STOPPED HIS PAPER.
We were just infested with critics, and we
tried to satisfy them all over We had one
subscriber who paid cash, and he was more
trouble to US than all the rest. He bought
US, once year, body and soul, for two dol
lars. He used to modify our politics every
which way, and he made US change our re-
ligion four times in five years. If we ever
tried to reason with him he 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 he had
changed his mind-which was gilded fig
ure of speech, because he hadn't any-and
order it to be left out. We couldn't stand
such a waste as that; we couldn't afford bo-
gus in that office; SO We always took the
leads out, altered the signature, credited the
| article to rival paper in the next village, and
put it in. Well, we did nave one or two
kinds of bogus. Whenever there was a
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 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 economic 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 at
| tention 10 the marks afterward; so the life
| of 'td ad and 'tf' ad was equally eter-
\ nal. / have seen It'd notice of a sheriff S
sale still booming serenely along two years
after the sale was over, the sheriff dead and
| the whole circumstance become ancient his
tory. Most of the yearly ads were patent
| medicine stereotypes, and we used to fence
| with them. Life was easy with us. If
WE PIED FORM
we suspended 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, paltry excuse, because
| that kind of paper was Just as well of with
| a sick editor as well one, and better of
| with a dead one than with either of them.
He was full of blessed egotism and placid
| self-importance, but he didn't know as much
as 3-m quad. He never set any type ex-
cept in the rush of the last day, and then he
| would smouch all the poetry, and leave the
rest to Jeff for the solid takes. He wrote
with impressive flatulence and soaring con.
fidence upon the vastest subjects; but puff
| ing aims gifts of wedding-cake salty ice
cream, abnormal watermelons, and sweet
potatoes the size of your leg was his best
hold. He was always poet, kind of poet
| of the Carriers Address breed, and when
| ever his intellect separated, and he read the
result to the printers and asked for their
opinion, they were very frank and straight
forward about it. they generally scraped
| their rules on the boxes all the time he was
reading, and called it hog wash when he
got through. All this was thirty-ive years
| ago. when the man who could set 200 an
hour could put on Just as many airs as he
| wanted to; and if these New York men,
who recently on a wager set 1000 an hour
solid minion for four hours on stretch had
appeared in that Office, they would have
been received as accomplishing of the
supremacy impossible, and drenched with
hospitable beer till the brewry was bankrupt.
81 can see that printing office of pre-his-
toric times yet, with its horse bills on the
walls, it's d boxes clogged with tallow, be.
cause we always stood the candle in the X
box nights, its towel, which was not con.
sidered soiled until it could stand. alone, land
other signs and symbols that marked the
establishment of that kind in the Missis
sippi Valley: and can see also the tramp
ing Jour who fitted by in the summer and
tarried a day, with his wallet stuffed with
one shirt and a hat full of handbills; for il
he couldn't get any type to set he would dc
temperance lecture. His way of life was
simple, his needs not complex; all he wan
ted was plate and bed and money enough tc
get drunk on and he was satisfied. But Il
| may be- as i have said, that i am among
strangers, and sing the glories of forgotten
age to unfamiliar ears, so will make even
and STOP"