Alpena weekly argus. [volume] (Alpena, Mich.) 1871-1893, 1886-02-03
Mark Twain a Cub Printer.

|
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-five years ago.
| was no stranger to him. l knew
him we'll. l built his fire for him in
the winter mornings; | brought his
water from the village pump; l Iswept
out his Office; l 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 "hell matter - 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 l was a cub. l wetted down the
paper Saturdays, turned it Sundays
for this was country weekly; l
rolled, l washed the rollers 1 washed
the forms. / folded the papers. l
carried them around at dawn Thurs
day mornings. enveloped the pa
pers that were for the mail-we had
hundred town subscribers and three
hundred and fifty country ones the
town subscribers paid in groceries and
the country ones in cabbages and
cordwood-whcn 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 orders
as to how it was to be edited dictat-
ed its opinions, marked out its course
for it, and every time the boss failed
to connect 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 a
year, body and soul, for two dollars.
He used to modify our politics every
which way, and he made us change
our religion 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 a 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 figure
of speech, because he hadn't any
and order it to be left out. We
couldn't stand such waste as that |;
we couldn't afford "bogus" in that Of
fee; so we always took the leads out,
altered the signature, credited the ar
ticle to the rival paper in the next
village, and put it in. Well, we did
have one or two kinds of "bogus."
Whenever there was a barbecue, or
circus. or baptizing, we knocked off
for half a 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 economize
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 To-
calities 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 to the marks afterward so
the life Of It'd ad and 'tf nd was
equally eternal. / have seen a I'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
history. Most of the yearly ads were
patent medicine stereotypes, and we
used to fence with them. Life was
easy with us if we pied a form we
suspended till next week, and we al
ways suspended now and then while
the fishing was good, and explained it
by the illness Of the editor, a paltry
excuse, because that kind of a paper
was just as well off with sick editor
as well one, and better off with n
dead one than with either of them.
He was full of blessed cgotism and
placid self-importance, but he didn't
know as much rs a Sem quad. He
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 the solid takes. He