it would come to that sooner or later, and so I might as well begin.  I read one of them paragraphs over again, so as to be certain, and then I burned my house down and started.  I have crippled several people, and have got one fellow up a tree, where I can get him if I want him.  But I thought I would call in here as I passed along, and make the thing perfectly certain; and now it is certain, and I tell you it is lucky for the chap that is in the tree.  I should have killed him, sure, as I went back.  Good-bye, sir, good-bye; you have taken a great load off my mind.  My reason has stood the strain of one of your agricultural articles, and I know that nothing can ever unseat it now. Good-bye.”

I felt a little uncomfortable about the cripplings and arsons this person had been entertaining himself with, for I could not help feeling remotely accessory to them.  But these thoughts were quickly banished, for the regular editor walked in! (I thought to myself, Now if you had gone to Egypt, as I recommended you to, I might have had a chance to get my hand in; but you wouldn’t do it, and here you are.  I sort of expected you.)

The editor was looking sad and perplexed and dejected.

He surveyed the wreck which that old rioter and those two young farmers had made, and then said:  “This is a sad business—­a very sad business.  There is the mucilage bottle broken, and six panes of glass, and a spittoon and two candlesticks.  But that is not the worst.  The reputation of the paper is injured—­and permanently, I fear.  True, there never was such a call for the paper before, and it never sold such a large edition or soared to such celebrity;—­but does one want to be famous for lunacy, and prosper upon the infirmities of his mind?  My friend, as I am an honest man, the street out here is full of people, and others are roosting on the fences, waiting to get a glimpse of you, because they think you are crazy.  And well they might, after reading your editorials.  They are a disgrace to journalism.  Why, what put it into your head that you could edit a paper of this nature?  You do not seem to know the first rudiments of agriculture.  You speak of a furrow and a harrow as being the same thing; you talk of the moulting season for cows; and you recommend the domestication of the polecat on account of its playfulness and its excellence as a ratter!  Your remark that clams will lie quiet if music be played to them was superfluous—­entirely superfluous.  Nothing disturbs clams.  Clams always lie quiet.  Clams care nothing whatever about music.  Ah, heaven and earth, friend! if you had made the acquiring of ignorance the study of your life, you could not have graduated with higher honour than you could to-day.  I never saw anything like it.  Your observation that the horse-chestnut as an article of commerce is steadily gaining in favour is simply calculated to destroy this journal.  I want you to throw up your situation and go.