Editorial Wild Oats

For a young printer left in charge of his uncle's newspaper, making the town talk seems the surest proof of editorial success. Mark Twain opens this collection of six comic pieces with a boy who fills an issue with personal jabs and discovers how quickly offended neighbours arrive at the office. New subscriptions, paid in vegetables and cordwood, complicate his uncle's reaction to the uproar.

The other excerpts turn editorial confidence into a running joke. In Tennessee, an associate editor's polite summary of rival papers meets with his employer's furious disapproval. Elsewhere, a late contribution reaches the press before anyone checks whether it makes sense, leaving the editor to puzzle over its supposed news. The contents also promise a piece about editing an agricultural paper. These sketches give readers interested in journalism a comic view of deadlines, careless judgment and writers who fail to understand the material they publish.