with the editors of that paper; for if they pied a form, they suspended
until the next week. They always suspended anyhow, every now and then,
when the fishing was good; and always fell back upon the illness of the
editor as a convenient excuse, Mark admitted that this was a paltry
excuse, for the all-sufficing reason that a paper of that sort was just
as well off with a sick editor as a well one, and better off with a dead
one than with either of them. At the age of fifteen he considered
himself a skilled journeyman printer; and his faculty for comedic
portrayal had already betrayed itself in occasional clumsy efforts. In
'My First Literary Venture', he narrates his experiences, amongst others
how greatly he increased the circulation of the paper, and incensed the
"inveterate woman-killer," whose poetry for that week's paper read, "To
Mary in H--l" (Hannibal). Mark added a "snappy foot--note" at the
bottom, in which he agreed to let the thing pass, for just that once;
but distinctly warning Mr. J. Gordon Runnels that the paper had a
character to sustain, and that in future, when Mr. Runnels wanted to
commune with his friends in h--l, he must select some other medium for
that communication! Many were the humorous skits, crudely illustrated
with cuts made from wooden blocks hacked out with his jack-knife, which
the mischievous young "devil" inserted in his brother's paper. Here we
may discern the first spontaneous outcroppings of the genuine humorist.
"It was on this paper, the 'Hannibal Journal'," says his biographer, Mr.
Albert B. Paine, "that young Sam Clemens began his writings--burlesques,
as a rule, of local characters and conditions--usually published in his
brother's absence, generally resulting in trouble on his return. Yet
they made the paper sell, and if Orion had but realized his possession
he might have turned his brother's talent into capital even then."

One evening in 1858, the boy, consumed with wanderlust, asked his mother
for five dollars--to start on his travels. He failed to receive the