MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. 



I never saw a pen scrape and scratch its way so viciously, or plough through 

 another man's verbs and adjectives so relentlessly. While he was in the midst of 

 his work, somebody shot at him through the open window, and marred the sym- 

 metry of my ear. 



"Ah," said he, "that is that scoundrel Smith, of the Moral Volcano — he was due 

 yesterday." And he snatched a navy revolver from his belt and fired. Smith 

 dropped, shot in the thigh. The shot spoiled Smith's aim, who was just taking a 

 second chance, and he crippled a stranger. It was me. Merely a finger shot off. 



Then the chief editor went on with his erasures and interlineations. Just as he 

 finished them a hand-grenade came down the stove pipe, and the explosion shivered 

 the stove into a thousand fragments. However, it did no further damage, except 

 that a vagrant piece knocked a couple of my teeth out. 



" That stove is utterly ruined," said the chief editor. 



I said I believed it was. 



" Well, no matter — don't want it this kind of weather. I know the man that did 

 it. I'll get him. Now, here is the way this stuff ought to be written." 



I took the manuscript. It was scarred with erasures and interlineations till its 

 mother wouldn't have known it if it had had one. It now read as follows : — 



" SPIRIT OF THE TENNESSEE PRESS. 



" The inveterate liars of the Semi- Weekly Earthquake are evidently endeavoring to palm off 

 upon a noble and chivalrous people another of their vile and brutal falsehoods with regard 

 to that most glorious conception of the nineteenth century, the Ballyhack railroad. The 

 idea that Buzzardville was to be left q& at one side originated in their own fulsome brains — or 

 rather in the settlings which they regard as brains. They had better swallow this lie if they want 

 to save their abandoned reptile carcasses the cowhiding they so richly deserve. 



" That ass, Blossom, of the Higginsville Thunderbolt and Battle Cry of Freedom, is down here 

 again sponging at the Van Buren. 



" We observe that the besotted blackguard of the Mud Spring Morning Howl is giving out, with 

 his usual propensity for lying, that Van Werter is not elected. The heaven-born mission of journal- 

 ism 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 ; and yet this black-hearted scoundrel degrades his great office per- 

 sistently to the dissemination of falsehood, calumny, vituperation, and vulgarity. 



" Blathersville wants a Nicholson pavement — it wants a jail and a poorhouse more. The idea 

 of a pavement in a one horse town composed of two gin mills, a blacksmith's shop, and that mustard- 



