Curious Republic of Gondour | Page 7

to be sure and not
mislead hurried or heedless readers: for I spoke of launching a
triumphal barge upon a desert, and planting a tree of prosperity in a
mine--a tree whose fragrance should slake the thirst of the naked, and
whose branches should spread abroad till they washed the chorea of,
etc., etc. I thought that manifest lunacy like that would protect the
reader. But to make assurance absolute, and show that I did not and
could not seriously mean to attempt an Agricultural Department, I
stated distinctly in my postscript that I did not know anything about
Agriculture. But alas! right there is where I made my worst
mistake--for that remark seems to have recommended my proposed
Agriculture more than anything else. It lets a little light in on me, and I
fancy I perceive that the farmers feel a little bored, sometimes, by the
oracular profundity of agricultural editors who "know it all." In fact,
one of my correspondents suggests this (for that unhappy squib has
deluged me with letters about potatoes, and cabbages, and hominy, and
vermicelli, and maccaroni, and all the other fruits, cereals, and
vegetables that ever grew on earth; and if I get done answering
questions about the best way of raising these things before I go raving
crazy, I shall be thankful, and shall never write obscurely for fun any
more).
Shall I tell the real reason why I have unintentionally succeeded in
fooling so many people? It is because some of them only read a little of
the squib I wrote and jumped to the conclusion that it was serious, and
the rest did not read it at all, but heard of my agricultural venture at
second-hand. Those cases I could not guard against, of course. To write
a burlesque so wild that its pretended facts will not be accepted in
perfect good faith by somebody, is, very nearly an impossible thing to
do. It is because, in some instances, the reader is a person who never
tries to deceive anybody himself, and therefore is not expecting any one
to wantonly practise a deception upon him; and in this case the only
person dishonoured 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" is 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 article, tranquilly turns up his
nose at it and leaves it unread. One can deliver a satire with telling
force through the insidious medium of a travesty, if he is careful not to
overwhelm the satire with the extraneous interest of the travesty, and so
bury it from the reader's sight and leave him a joked and defrauded
victim, when the honest intent was to add to either his knowledge or his
wisdom. I have had a deal of experience in burlesques and their
unfortunate aptness to deceive the public, and this is why I tried hard to
make that agricultural one so broad and so perfectly palpable that even
a one-eyed potato could see it; and yet, as I speak the solemn truth, it
fooled one of the ablest agricultural editors in America!

DAN MURPHY
One of the saddest things that ever came under my notice (said the
banker's clerk) was there in Corning, during the war. Dan Murphy
enlisted as a private, and fought very bravely. The boys all liked him,
and when a wound by and by weakened him down till carrying a
musket was too heavy work for him, they clubbed together and fixed
him up as a sutler. He made money then, and sent it always to his wife
to bank for him. She was a washer and ironer, and knew enough by
hard experience to keep money when she got it. She didn't waste a
penny. On the contrary, she began to get miserly as her bank account
grew. She grieved to part with a cent, poor creature, for twice in her
hard-working life she had known what it was to be hungry, cold,
friendless, sick, and without a dollar in the world, and she had a
haunting dread of suffering so again. Well, at last Dan died; and the
boys, in testimony of their esteem and respect for him, telegraphed to
Mrs. Murphy to know if she would like to have him embalmed and sent
home, when you know the usual custom was to dump a poor devil like
him into a shallow hole, and then inform his friends what had become
of him. Mrs. Murphy jumped to the conclusion