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 polecat 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 superfluous--entirely superfluous. Nothing
disturbs clams. Clams _always_ lie quiet. Clams care nothing whatever
about music. Ah, heaven and earth, friend! if you had made the acquiring
of ignorance the study of your life, you could not have graduated with
higher honour than you could to-day. I never saw anything like it. Your
observation that the horse-chestnut as an article of commerce is
steadily gaining in favour is simply calculated to destroy this journal.
I want you to throw up your situation and go. I want no more holiday--I
could not enjoy it if I had it. Certainly not with you in my chair. I
would always stand in dread of what you might be going to recommend
next. It makes me lose all patience every time I think of your
discussing oyster-beds under the head of 'Landscape Gardening.' I want
you to go. Nothing on earth could persuade me to take another holiday.
Oh! why didn't you _tell_ me you didn't know anything about
agriculture?"

"_Tell_ you, you cornstalk, you cabbage, you son of a cauliflower? It's
the first time I ever heard such an unfeeling remark. I tell you I have
been in the editorial business goin