Editorial Wild Oats - Mark Twain

by Mark Twain

I was a very smart child at the age of thirteen--an unusually smart child, I thought at the time. It was then that I did my first newspaper scribbling, and most unexpectedly to me it stirred up a fine sensation in the community. It did, indeed, and I was very proud of it, too. I was a printer's "devil," and a progressive and aspiring one. My uncle had me on his paper (the _Weekly Hannibal Journal_, two dollars a year, in advance--five hundred subscribers, and they paid in cord-wood, cabbages, and unmarketable turnips), and on a lucky summer's day he left town to be gone a week, and asked me if I thought I could edit one issue of the paper judiciously. Ah! didn't I want to try! Higgins was the editor on the rival paper. He had lately been jilted, and one night a friend found an open note on the poor fellow's 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 discovered Higgins wading back to shore. He had concluded he wouldn't. The village was full of it for several days, but Higgins did not suspect it. I thought this was a fine opportunity. I wrote an elaborately wretched account of the whole matter, and then illustrated it with villanous cuts engraved on the bottoms of wooden type with a jack-knife--one of them a picture of Higgins wading out into the creek in his shirt, with a lantern, sounding the depth of the water with a walking-stick. I thought it was desperately funny, and was densely unconscious that there was any moral obliquity about such a publication. Being satisfied with this effort, I looked around for other worlds to conquer, and it struck me that it would make good, interesting matter to charge the editor of a neighboring country paper with a piece of gratuitous rascality and "see him squirm."


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Genres: Humor, Classics, Amazon, American

25 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," with William Faulkner calling him "the father of American literature." His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), with the latter often called the "Great American Novel." Twain also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), and co-wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner.

Reviews

[〰️Beth〰️ · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I laughed my way through this collection of shorts all I could think was “ What would Twain write about today’s media?” Just a few samples from this compilation circa 1905.

The heaven-born mission of journalism is to disseminate truth: to eradicate error; to educate, refine, and elevate the tone of public morals and manners, and make all men more gentle, more virtuous, more charitable, and in all ways better, and holier, and happier…

I tell you I have been in the editorial business going on fourteen years, and it is the first time I ever heard of a man's having to know anything in order to edit a newspaper.

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Twain is so funny. You forget if you haven't read him in years. This little book includes stories about working at various newspapers and humorous misunderstandings and events.

[Onyango Makagutu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hilarious

[Kirk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three of these stories—"My First Literary Venture," "Journalism in Tennessee," and "How I Edited an Agricultural Paper"—are a hoot. The other three are OK. Get the edition that's illustrated with woodcuts. The annotations in the annotated edition don't add much, and the woodcuts are missing.

[Mathher Abbassi · Rating 3 out of 5]

The early beginning of Mark Twain, anecdotally and humorously.

[J.V. Stanley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is certainly worth the read. His exaggerations are spot on along with the trials an editor goes through. Depicting the relationship between reader/writer/editor in a most amusing fashion, it is sure to teach you a thing or two on how to handle any writing situation with grace.