JOURNALISM IN TENNESSEE --[Written about 1871.]
The editor of the Memphis Avalanche swoops thus mildly down upon a correspondent who posted him as a Radical:-- "While he was writing the first word, the middle, dotting his i's, crossing his t's, and punching his period, he knew he was concocting a sentence that was saturated with infamy and reeking with falsehood."--Exchange.
I was told by the physician that a Southern climate would improve my health, and so I went down to Tennessee, and got a berth on the Morning Glory and Johnson County War-Whoop as associate editor.When I went on duty I found the chief editor sitting tilted back in a three-legged chair with his feet on a pine table.There was another pine table in the room and another afflicted chair, and both were half buried under newspapers and scraps and sheets of manuscript.There was a wooden box of sand, sprinkled with cigar stubs and "old soldiers," and a stove with a door hanging by its upper hinge.The chief editor had a long-tailed black cloth frock-coat on, and white linen pants.His boots were small and neatly blacked.He wore a ruffled shirt, a large seal-ring, a standing collar of obsolete pattern, and a checkered neckerchief with the ends hanging down.Date of costume about 1848.He was smoking a cigar, and trying to think of a word, and in pawing his hair he had rumpled his locks a good deal.He was scowling fearfully, and I judged that he was concocting a particularly knotty editorial.He told me to take the exchanges and skim through them and write up the "Spirit of the Tennessee Press," condensing into the article all of their contents that seemed of interest.
I wrote as follows:
SPIRIT OF THE TENNESSEE PRESS
The editors of the Semi-Weekly Earthquake evidently labor under a misapprehension with regard to the Dallyhack railroad.It is not the object of the company to leave Buzzardville off to one side.
On the contrary, they consider it one of the most important points along the line, and consequently can have no desire to slight it.
The gentlemen of the Earthquake will, of course, take pleasure in making the correction.
John W.Blossom, Esq., the able editor of the Higginsville Thunderbolt and Battle Cry of Freedom, arrived in the city yesterday.He is stopping at the Van Buren House.
We observe that our contemporary of the Mud Springs Morning Howl has fallen into the error of supposing that the election of Van Werter is not an established fact, but he will have discovered his mistake before this reminder reaches him, no doubt.He was doubtless misled by incomplete election returns.
It is pleasant to note that the city of Blathersville is endeavoring to contract with some New York gentlemen to pave its well-nigh impassable streets with the Nicholson pavement.The Daily Hurrah urges the measure with ability, and seems confident of ultimate success.
I passed my manuscript over to the chief editor for acceptance, alteration, or destruction.He glanced at it and his face clouded.He ran his eye down the pages, and his countenance grew portentous.It was easy to see that something was wrong.Presently he sprang up and said:
"Thunder and lightning! Do you suppose I am going to speak of those cattle that way? Do you suppose my subscribers are going to stand such gruel as that? Give me the pen!"I never saw a pen scrape and scratch its way sc viciously, or plow 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 symmetry 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 erasure; 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 off 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 Springs Morning Howl is giving out, with his usual propensity for lying, that Van Werter is not elected.The heaven-born mission of journalism 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 blackhearted scoundrel degrades his great office persistently to the dissemination of falsehood, calumny, vituperation, and vulgarity.
