60 CHOICE BITS FROM MARK TWAIN.
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,
heavens and earth, friend ! if you had made the
acquiring of ignorance the study of your life you
could not have graduated with higher honours 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 alvva3's
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 going on fourteen years, and it
is the first time I ever heard of a man's having to
know anything in order to edit a newspaper.
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