The excited listener sprang toward me to shake hands, and said: 

“There, there—­that will do.  I know I am all right now, because you have read it just as I did, word, for word.  But, stranger, when I first read it this morning, I said to myself, I never, never believed it before, notwithstanding my friends kept me under watch so strict, but now I believe I am crazy; and with that I fetched a howl that you might have heard two miles, and started out to kill somebody—­because, you know, I knew 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-by, sir, good-by; 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-by, sir.”

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 pole-cat 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