Year: 1870

From Mark Twans Memoranda " in the June


Galaxy.


WHEN published squib recently, in
which | said l was going to edit an agri.
cultural department in this magazine, I
certainly did not desire to deceive any
body. had not the remotest desire to
play upon any ones confidence with a
practical joke, for he is pitiful creature
indeed who will degrade the dignity of his
humanity TO the contfiving of the witless
inventions that go by that name. | pur-
posely wrote the thing as absurdly and
as extravagantly as it could be written, in
order to be sure and not mislead hurried
or needless readers; tor spoke of launch
ing triumphal barge upon desert, and
planting tree of prosperity in a mine-a
tree whose fragrance should slake the thirst
OF the ndked, and whose branches should
spread abroad till they toaShed the shores Of
etc, etc. l thought that manifest lunacy
IKE that would protect the reader. But
10 make assurance absolute, and show that
did not and could not seriously mean to
attempt an Horticultural Department,
stated distinctly in my postscript that /
dtd not kno,o anything about Agriculture.
But, alas right there is where l made
my worst mistake--tor that remark seems





culture more than anything else. 1t lets
little light in on me, and fancy per
ceive that the farmers feel a little bored
sometimes by the oracular profundity of
agricultural editors who "know it ALL"
In TACT, one of my correspondents sug-
gests this tor that unhappy squib has
dcluged me with letters about potatoes,
and cabbages, and hominy and vermicelli,
and macc6roni, and all the other fruits,
cereals and vegetables that ever grew on
earth; and if | get through answering
questions about the best way. of raising
these things before l go raving crazy, /
shall bt thankful, and shall never write
obscurity for fun any more.) =


Shall tell the reason why have unin-
tentionally succeeded in fooling so many
people? 1t is because some of them read
only little of the squib l wrote, and
jumped to the conclusion that it was seri-
GUS, and the rest did not read it at all, but
heard of my agricultural venture at Sec
ond-hand. Those cases could not guard
against, of course. To write burlesque
so wild that its pretended facts will not be
accepted in perfect good faith by some
body, is very nearly an impossible thing
to do. 1t is because, in some instances
the reader is person who never tries to
deceive anybody himself and therefore is
not expecting one to wantonly practice a
deception upon him and in this case the
only person dishonOred is the man who
wrote the burlesque. In other instances
the "nub" or moral of the burlesque-if
its object be to enforce a truth-escapes
notice in the superior glare of something
in the body of the burlesque itself. And
very often this "moral" ls tagged on at
the bottom, and the reader, not knowing
that it is the key of the whole thing, and
the only important paragraph in the arti-
Gle, TRANQUILITY turns up his nose at it, and
leaves it unread. One can deliver satire
with telling force through the insidious
medium of travesty, and so bury it from
the readers sight, and leave him a joked
and defrauded victim, when the honest
intent was to add to either his knowledge
or his wisdom. / have had deal of ex-
perience in burlesques and their unfortu.
nate apt2ess to deceive the public, and
this Is why tried hard to make that ag-
ricultural one so broad and so perfectly
palpable that even a one eyed potato could
see it; and yet, as l speak the solemn
truth, it fooled one of The ablest agricul-
tural editors in Americal


THE PETRIFIED MAN.


Now, to show how really hard it is to
foist moral or truth upon an unsuspect-
ing public through burlesgue without
entirely and absurdly missing ones mark,
l will here set down two experiences of
my own in this thing. In the fall of 1862,
in Nevada and California, the people got
to running wild about extraordinary
petritactions and other natural narvels.
One could scarcely pick up paper with
out finding in it one or two glorifed dis.
coveries of this kind. The mania was
becoming little ridiculous. l was a
bran-new local editor in Virginia City,
and L felt called upon to destroy this
growing evil; we all have our benignant,
tatherly moods at one time or another,
suppose. chose to kill the petrifaction
mania with a delicate, very delicate,
satire But maybe it was altogether too
delicate, for nobody ever perceived the |
satire part of it at all. put my scheme
in the shape of the discovery of re-
markable petrified man. had tempo
rary falling out with Mr.. Sewall, the new
Coroner and Justice of the Peace of |
Humboldt, and thought might as well |
touch him up a little at the same time aud |
make him ridiculous, and thus combine
pleasure with business. SO | told, in |
patient, belief compelling detail all about |
the finding of petrified man at GraVelly |
Ford (eXactly a hundred and twenty
miles, over breakneck mountain trail,
from where Sewell liVed); how all the
favants in the immediate neighbor-
hood had been to examine il
Gt was notorious that there was not liv |
ing creature within fifty miles of there, |
except a few starving Indians, some Grip.
pied grasshoppers, and four or five buz |
yards out of meat and too feeble to get |
away; how those savants all pronounced |
the petrifed man TO have been in state |
of complete petrifaction for over ten |
generations; and then, with a serious
ness that / ought to have been ashamed |
to assume, l stated that as soon as Mr.. |
Sewall heard the news, he summoned
jury, mouted his mule, and posted off,
with noble reverence for official duty, on
that awful five days journey, through
alkali, sage'brush, peril of body and i'm
minent starvation, to hold an inquest on
this man that had been dead and turned
10 everlasting stone for more than three
hundred years. And then my hand being
sin so to speak, ] went on, with the
same unflinching gravity, to state that the |
jury returned verdict that deceased came
TO his death from protrdcted erpOSure
This only moved me to higher flights OF
Imagination, and / said that the Jury, with





then dug grave, and were about to give
the petriied man Christian burial, when
they found that for ages limestone sedi-
ment had been trickling down the face of
the stone against which he was sitting,
and this stuff had run under him and ce
mented him fast to the "bed-roek !" that
the jury (they were all silVer-miners) can
vassld the difficulty moment, and then
got out their powder and fuse, and pro.
oeeded to drill hole under him, in order
to blast him from his position, when Mr..
Sewall, with that delicacy so character
ishc Of him, forbade them, observing that
il would be little less than a sacrilege to
do such thing" From beginning TO end
the Petrifled Man" squib was a string
ii roaring absurdities, albeit they were
told with an unfair pretence of truth that
even imposed upon me TO some extent,
and was in some danger of believing in
my own fraud. But really had no desire
todeceiVe anybody, and no expectation of