Chapter VI: Preface (6)

If you are compelled to use ink never use that vulgarity known as the blotting pad. If you drop a blot of ink on the paper, lick it off. The intelligent compositor loves nothing so dearly as to read through the smear this will make across twenty or thirty words. We have seen him hang over such a piece of copy half an hour, swearing like a pirate all the time, he felt that good.

Don’t punctuate. Editors and publishers prefer to punctuate all manuscript sent to them. And don’t use capitals. Then the editor can punctuate and capitalize to suit himself, and your article, when you see it in print, will astonish even if it does not please you.

Don’t try to write too plainly. It is a sign of plebeian origin and public-school breeding. Poor writing is an indication of genius. It’s about the only indication of genius that a great many men possess. Scrawl your article with your eyes shut, and make every word as illegible as you can. We get the same price for it from the rag-man as though the paper were covered with copper-plate sentences.

Avoid all painstaking with proper names. All editors know the full name of every man, woman and child in the United States, and the merest hint at the name is sufficient. For instance, if you write a character something like a drunken figure “8,” and then draw a wavy line, and then write the letter M and another wavy line, the editor will know at once that you mean Samuel Morrison, even though you may think you mean “Lemuel Messenger.” It is a great mistake to think that proper names should be written plainly.

Always write on both sides of the paper, and when you have filled both sides of every page trail a line up and down every margin, and back to the top of the first page, closing your article by writing the signature just above the date. How editors do love to get hold of articles written in this style. And how they would like to get hold of the man who sends them. Just for ten minutes. Alone. In the woods, with a gun.

Lay your paper on the ground when you write; the rougher the ground the better. A dry goods box or the side of the house will do if the ground is too damp. Any thing rather than a table or desk.

Coarse brown wrapping paper is the best for writing your articles on. If you can tear down an old circus poster and write on the pasty side of it with a pine stick, it will do still better.

When your article is completed, crunch the paper in your pocket, and carry it two or three days before sending it in. This rubs off the superfluous pencil marks and makes it lighter to handle.

If you can think of it, lose one page out of the middle of your article. The editor can easily supply what is missing, and he loves to do it. He has nothing else to do.

If correspondents will observe these directions, editors, in most instances, will hold themselves personally responsible for every error that appears in their articles, and will pay full claims for damages when complaint is made. We shall never forget the last man who complained at the _Hawkeye_ office under this rule. We can never, never, although we should live a thousand years, forget the appalling look he turned upon us while we were pulling his lungs out of his ear with the nail-grab. Our heart seemed to turn to ice, under the influence of that dumb beseeching look, while we tore him to pieces. We have never torn a man to pieces since without feeling the hot tears spring to our eyes as we think of that man. We have been tempted, time and again, to break ourselves of this habit of tearing men to pieces for trivial causes. But we digress. We were merely saying we are always happy to receive complaints and correct any errors for which we are responsible.

DANGERS OF BATHING.

As the warm weather raises the waters of the creeks and rivers to the temperature so inviting to the boys of the republic, a few instructive and general suggestions relative to bathing in the streams may prove the means of saving some juvenile lives. Boys are proverbially rash and reckless in almost everything they do, and are so apt to overdo whatever they undertake, except sawing wood or fastening the front gate, that too much wholesome advice on the benefits of abstinence can never be amiss in their cases. And especially is such advice necessary in regard to bathing, for when a boy makes up his mind to “go swimming,” he thinks of nothing in the world except getting into the water. And every year so many precious lives are endangered, and so much pain and misery caused by boyish, carelessness and thoughtlessness in this respect, that it is a solemn and important duty of journalism to warn the boys of the dangers that wait upon bathing parties, and instruct them how to avoid them. We therefore give a few rules, culled from the pages of personal experience, which, if properly observed by the boys of America, may save them no one can tell how much misery and suffering.

1. Always ask your mother if you may go down to the river with the boys to hunt carnelians. Mention the names of Sammie Johnson, and Robbie Gregg, and Ellis Haskell and Johnnie Chalmers, and Charlie Austin, and Wallie Colburn, and Dockie Worthington, all well-known “good boys,” who wash their faces every morning, keep their clothes clean, wear white-collars, and don’t say bad words, as the young gentlemen who are to comprise the party. A judicious and strict adherence to this rule has often obtained the necessary parental permission to visit the river shore, which would otherwise be sternly denied, especially if it should appear that Bill Slamup, and Tom Dobbins, and Jim Sikes, and Butch Tinker, and Mickey McCann, were the alternates who were confidently expected to represent the first named delegates in the convention.

2. Avoid going into the river in the vicinity of a lumber yard. The temptation to take pine boards from the lumber piles to swim on is too strong for many boys to resist. It is very pleasant, we know, to swim around on a nice broad plank, but the lumbermen do not always like it, and we have known a rough board, abruptly drawn from beneath the horizontal figure of a kicking, paddling, laughing boy, to fill him with remorse and slivers to an extent that would appear incredible were it not for the fact that the boy who loses his plank in this way has plenty of time to count his slivers as he pulls them out.

We knew a boy, twenty years ago, who swam off a plank in this way, and immediately afterward sat down on the sandy shore, and amid the unfeeling laughter and mocking sympathy of his colleagues, withdrew from his cuticle, beginning at the chin and ending at the toes, three hundred and seventeen well-developed average slivers, and four of a larger variety, denominated snags. And sometimes we wake up in the night, from happy dreams of childhood’s guileless days, and half believe we didn’t get all those slivers out then.

3. Avoid putting a bar of kitchen soap in your pocket before you leave home. It frequently gives the bather away entirely, being quickly missed from the sink, and readily detected about the person. And even if you get it safely to the river, and the first boy who “soaps himself” does not lose it in twenty feet of water, the “strocky” appearance of your hair, on your return home, instantly betrays the recent and extravagant use of resin soap, and grave consequences are apt to follow. Besides, you do not really need the soap, as is attested by your well-known aversion to it at home.

4. If convenient, bathe very near a railroad bridge. Then, when a passenger train comes thundering by, you can rush out of the water and dance and shriek on the bank. Travelers like this; and if your uncle Jasper, from Waterloo, or your father returning from Creston, should happen to be on the train and recognize you, they will tell you what the passengers said about it, and your father will be so pleased that he will assist you in a little physical exercise, so essential to the health after bathing. And then the next time you go in swimming you can show the boys your back--a spectacle in which they will take fiendish delight, which they will exhibit by imitating, in most expressive pantomime, the contortions, gestures, and outcries in which you were supposed to have indulged while your father was putting that back on you.

5. If you desire to get up a crowd to go swimming, signify your wishes by holding up your right hand, with the first and second fingers erect and spread apart like a letter V, and as many good boys as are ready, willing and anxious to run away and go with you, will respond by the same sign, and the party can easily be made up without fear of detection, in the presence of the unsuspecting preceptor, who is a graduate of a private school, and never had any fun.

6. Should any boy be so lost to honor as to desire to leave the water before the rest of the crowd wish to do so, he may be easily induced to return to the liquid element by gently tossing a handful of dry sand or dust upon his back, as nearly between the shoulders as may be. If there is a really good, unsophisticated boy in the crowd whose habit of wearing a white collar and carrying a clean handkerchief pronounces him a haughty aristocrat, the bad boys by getting dressed first and judiciously applying the sand to him as often as he “comes out,” can keep him in the water until his father comes to look for him. Then, the next afternoon he goes down with you to the river, you can look at his back, and have your revenge.

7. If a boy lingers in the water too long, it is sometimes advisable, in order that he may learn to abstain from indulging himself to such an intemperate extent in the future, to tie each sleeve of his shirt in a most terrific hard knot, right at the elbow. When this knot is dipped into the water, and a boy gets at each end of the sleeve, braces his feet and pulls for life, it may be drawn so tightly that it can not be drawn out with a stump machine. The boy who belongs to that shirt, after many vain endeavors, is either compelled to cut off the sleeves, or, _multis cum lachrymis_, go home with it buttoned around his neck and hanging down his back, like a drunken apron. This gives him away, bad, and the appearance of that weeping boy, plodding timorously and apprehensively homeward through the gloaming, and the variegated aspect of his back the next night, produce such a pleasant impression upon you, that for two weeks afterward, as your dear mother looks in at your room door, and sees you smiling in your sleep, she thinks the angels are whispering to you.

8. The most approved method of drying the hair is to shake it up rapidly with a pine stick. Never comb your hair smoothly before going home, no matter who offers to loan you a pocket-comb. A slick head of hair excites suspicion in the family circle on sight.

9. If, at the supper-table, the dreadful discovery is made by your mother or sister that your shirt is wrong side out, the best way to do is to own right up. Excuses are useless; and no mother or father of ordinary intelligence was ever misled by the assertion, however solemnly made, that the shirt was turned by reason of the boy too suddenly climbing a fence instead of going through the gate.

10. To get water out of your ears, lean your head over to one side, and kick out violently with one leg, while you pound your head smartly with the palm of your hand. It is an exploded fallacy that holding a warm stone to the ear will bring out the water.

There are some other rules which might be added to the above, but they are comparatively unimportant, and are so generally known that you can learn them by applying for information to the first bad boy you meet.

THE POWER OF DIGNITY.

The human heart, in all its expansive, limitless capacity for enjoyment, takes greater pleasure in nothing than in witnessing a portly, solemn-visaged man, the embodiment of natural dignity, importance in clothes, administer a scathing rebuke to some “smart” petty government official. One morning just such a personification of innate dignity loomed up at the stamp window of the post-office, and glared in gloomy and majestic displeasure at the busy clerk who registered a letter before he sprang to the window and asked the stately customer what he wished. The great man did not answer for several moments. He gazed steadily and impressively over the clerk’s head, and then asked, in ponderous tones:

“Is there any one hear-r-r-e who attends to business?”

The embarrassed clerk blushed, faltered for a moment, then, recovering himself, said, with characteristic and national cheerfulness, becoming an official of the Republic:

“I will see, sir.”

And he disappeared. He went into the other departments, tortured a carrier with an original conundrum, and heard a good story in the mailing room, and came back.

“Yes, sir,” he said to the great one, “there are, in addition to myself, three clerks in the letter department, one in the mailing room, four carriers, three route agents, the mail driver and a janitor.”

“Ah-h-h! I am glad there are so many. I may in all that number find one who is at his post.”

And then he looked as impressive as a special agent, and was silent for three minutes, while the humbled clerk awaited his orders, and impatient men behind him fidgeted and grumbled. Finally, the great man said with deep solemnity:

“I wish one three-cent stamp.”

The clerk tore off the stamp and held it, waiting for the consideration. The great man made a somewhat longer pause than usual; he felt in his various vest pockets; he gradually lost his look of impressive rebuke; his chest caved in, and he assumed the aspect of an ordinary frail mortal, and he said:

“Ah--the fact is--I’m sure--ah--in short, I find that I have carelessly left my purse at home--can you kindly--”

The clerk, with the faintest suggestion of triumph in his eye, brusquely waved the great man aside with--

“Sorry for you, sir; but the clerk who sells stamps on credit is not in. What does the next man want?”

And the great man, as he backed through the smiling crowd who stood around with money in their hands, felt somehow that his rebuke had been thrown away, and feared that if the case went to the jury without argument it would very probably bring in a verdict for the Government.

A CANDID CONFESSION.

There used to live down on Washington Street, a good man, who endeavored to train up his children in the way they should go, and as his flock was numerous he had anything but a sinecure in this training business. Only last Summer the elder of these male olive branches, who had lived about fourteen wicked years, enticed his younger brother, who had only had ten years’ experience in boyish deviltry, to go out on the river in a boat, a species of pastime which their father had many a time forbidden, and had even gone so far as to enforce his veto with a skate strap. But the boys went this time, trusting to luck to conceal their depravity from the knowledge of their pa, and in due time they returned, and walked around the house, the two most innocent looking boys in Burlington. They separated for a few moments, and at the expiration of that time the elder was suddenly confronted by his father who requested a private interview in the usual place, and the pair adjourned to the woodshed, where, after a brief, but highly spirited performance, in which the boy appeared most successfully as “heavy villain” and his father took his favorite role of “first old man,” the curtain went down and the boy, considerably mystified, sought his younger brother.

“John,” he said, “who do you suppose told dad? Have you been licked?”

John’s face will not look more peaceful and resigned when it is in his coffin than it did as he replied,

“No, have you?”

“Have I? Come down to the cow yard and look at my back.”

John declined, but said:

“Well, Bill, I’ll tell you how father found us out. I am tired of acting this way, and I ain’t going to run away and come home and lie about it any more. I’m going to do better after this, and so when I saw father I couldn’t help it, and went right to him and confessed.”

Bill was touched at this manly action on the part of his younger brother. It found a tender place in the bad boy’s heart, and he was visibly affected by it. But he asked:

“How did it happen the old man didn’t lick you?”

“Well,” said the penitent young reformer, “you see I didn’t confess on myself, I only confessed on you; that was the way of it.”

A strange, cold light glittered in Bill’s eye.

“Only confessed on me?” he said. “Well, that’s all right, but come down behind the cow shed and look at my back.”

And when they got there do you suppose John saw the first mite of Bill’s back? Ah no, dear children, he saw nothing bigger than Bill’s fists, and before he got out of that locality he was the worst pounded John that ever confessed on anybody. Thus it is that our coming reformers are made and trained.

A BURLINGTON NOVELETTE.