Ottumwa tri-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1903-1916, 1908-03-24
"REMINISCENCES OF MARK TWAIN

| Exchange.-There seems to be
something in the business that brings
out any trace =4of humor that a man
may have in him. and the printing
craft has, therefore, been noted as
the producer of humorists, consequent
lly it does not seem a strange fact
that the Prince of Humorists, Mark
Twain, was once a printer. This fact
is strongly brought to the front in the
serial story of his life-"Mark
Twain's Autobiography now run
ming in the North American Re-
view from which we make the fol-
lowing short extracts to show that
the printer was always just foolish
Speaking of his brother, he says:
"About 1S49 or 1850 Orion severed
his connection with the printing house
in st. Louis and came up to Hannibal
and bought weekly paper called the
Hannibal Journal. together with it's
plant and it's good will, for the sum
of $500 cash. He borrowed the cash at
10 per cent interest from an old far
mer named Johnson, who lived five
miles out of town. Then he reduced
the subscription price of the paper
from two dollars to one dollar. He re-
duced the rates for advertising to
about the same proportion. and thus
he created one absolute and unassail-
able certainty-to wit: that the bust
ness would never pay him single
cent of profit. He took me out of the
Courier Office and engaged my SER
vices in mis- own at three dollars and
half a week, which was an extrava-
CANT wage, but Orion was always gem
erous. always liberal with everybody
but himself It cost him nothing in my
case, for he never was able to pay
me penny as long as I was with him.
BY the end of the first year he found
he must make some economies. The
office rent was cheap, but it was not
cheap enough. He could not afford to
pay rent of any kind. so he moved the
whole plant In the house where we
lived in, and it cramped the dwelling
place cruelty. He kept that paper
alive during four years, but I have at
this time no idea how he accomplish
ed 1t. Toward the end of each year
he had to turn out and scrape and
scratch for the fifty dollars of inter-
est due Mr.. Johnson, and that fifty dol
lars was about the only cash he ever
received or paid out. / suppose. while
he was proprietor of that newspaper,
except for ink and printing paper
The paper was dead failure. 1t had
to be that from the start. Finally
he handed it over to Mr.. Johnson and
went up to Muscatine, Iowa, and ac-
quired small interest In a weekly
newspaper there.
ITO gain a living in Muscatine was
plainly impossible, so Orion and his
new wife went to Keokuk to live He
bought a little bit of job printing
phantom credit. of course and at
once put prices down to where not
even the apprentice could get living
out OF it, and this sort of thing went
on.
Meantime Orion had gone down
the river and established his little Job
printing Office in Keokuk. On account
or charging next to nothing for the
work done in his job office he had al
most nothing to do there. He was new.
er able to comprehend that work
done on a profitless basis deteriorates
and is presently not worth anything,
and that customers are then Obliged
TO go where they can get better work,
ever If they must pay better prices