I take my leave, sir. Since I have been treated as you have
treated me, I am perfectly willing to go. But I have done my duty. I
have fulfilled my contract as far as I was permitted to do it. I said I
could make your paper of interest to all classes--and I have. I said I
could run your circulation up to twenty thousand copies, and if I had had
two more weeks I'd have done it. And I'd have given you the best class
of readers that ever an agricultural paper had--not a farmer in it, nor a
solitary individual who could tell a watermelon-tree from a peach-vine to
save his life. You are the loser by this rupture, not me, Pie-plant.
Adios."
I then left.
THE PETRIFIED MAN
Now, to show how really hard it is to foist a moral or a truth upon an
unsuspecting public through a burlesque without entirely and absurdly
missing one's mark, I will here set down two experiences of my own in
this thing. In the fall of 1862, in Nevada and California, the people
got to running wild about extraordinary petrifactions and other natural
marvels. One could scarcely pick up a paper without finding in it one or
two glorified discoveries of this kind. The mania was becoming a little
ridiculous.
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