Forest City press. (Forest City, Potter County, D.T. [S.D.]) 1883-19??, 1914-02-27
AS EDITOR MARK twain
STIRRED UP HANNIBAL
1t Was His First Venture and
He Went After Every
One in County.
From Sketches New and DID," by
hdorlk HNr,.nin

From Sketches New and DID," by
Mark Twain.
I was a very smart child at the
Of 13-an unusually smart child l
thought at the time. 1t was then that
l did my first newspaper scribbling,
and most unexpectedly to me it stirred
up a fine sensation In the community.
1t did, indeed. and 1 was ver:' pround
1t did, indeed, and I was very proud
and a progressive n aspiring one.
My uncle had me or his paper (the
Weekly Hannibal Journal, 81 a yea
in advance-500 subscribers-and they
paid for 1T In cordwood. cabbages and
summers day he left town to be gone a
week. and asked me if 1 thought I
could edit one issue OF the paper jul
diciously. All! didn't 1 want to try!
Higgins was the editor OF the rival
paper. He had lately been Tilted, and
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 dis
covered Higgins wading ashore. He
had concluded he wouldn't do it. The
but Higgins did not suspect it. 1
thought this was a fine opportunity. I
wrote an deliberately wretched account
Of the whole affair and then illustrated
1T with %villanious cuts engraved on the
bottom of wooden type with a jacknife
one of them a picture of Higgins
wadding out into the creek in his shirt
with a lantern sounding the dept Of the
water with a walking stick. I thought
1t was desperately funny and was
densely unconscious that there was any
moral %obliquity about such a publica-
ton. Being satisfied with this effort
1 looked around for other worlds to
conquer n 1t struck me that 1t would
make good interesting matter to charge
the editor of a n%eighboring country
paper with a piece Of gratutious rascal
ity and see him squirm." 1 did it,
The Burial Of Sir John Moore" and a
pretty crude parody it was, too. Then
1 lampooned two prominent citizens
outrageously, not because they had
done anything to deserve 1t. but merely
because 1 thought it was my duty
to make the paper lively.
Next 1 gently touched up the newest
stranger-the lion of the day, the gorg-
eous journeyman tailor from Quincy.
He was g stmpering coxcomb of the
first water. and the loudest dressed
man In the state-and an inveterate
"lushy" poetry for the Journal about
his newest conquest. His rhymes for
my week were headed Ito Mary in
HI" meaning to Mary in Hannibal,
of course. But while setting up the
piece l was suddenly riven from head
to heel by what l regarded as a perfect
thunderboldt Of humor. and I COM
pressed it into a snappy f%ootnote at the
bottom-thus: we will let this thing
pass just this once: but we wish Mr.. j.
Gordon Runnels to understand tina we
have a character to sustain, and from
this time forth when ne wants to COM
mune with his friends in HI he must
use some other medium that the
columns of this Journal"
The paper came out, and I never
knew anything to attract so much at
tention as those playful trifles Of mine.
For once the Hannibal Journal was
IN demand-a novelty it had not ex-
perienced before. The whole town was
stirred. Higgins dropped in with a
double barreled shotgun early in the
forenoon. When found out hat it was
an infant las he called mel that had
done him the damage, he simply pulled
my ears and went away; but he threw
up his situation that night and left
town for good. The tailor came with
his goose n a pair of shears; but
he despised mo too. nj departed for
the south that night. The two lam
pooned citizens came with threats of
libel and went away incensed at my
pranced in with a warwhoop next day.,
suffering for blood to drink: but he
ended by forgiving me cordially and
inviting me down to the drug store to
wash away all enirlosity in q friendly
bumper of "Fahnestock's Vermifuge."
1t was his little joke. My uncle was
very angry when he got back-un-
reasonably SO. 1 thought. considering
what an impetus I had given the paper,
and considering also that gratitude
for his preservation ought to be upper
most IN his mind. in as much as by his
delay he had so wonderfully escaped
dissection, tomahawking, libel and get
ting his head shot off. But he softened
when he looked at the accounts and
saw that I had actually booked the un-
paralleled number of SO new subscrib-
ers. n had the vegetables to show for
it cordwood, cabbages, beans and un-
salable turnips enough to run the fam
lily for two years!