_ When I published a squib recently in which I said I was going to edit an
Agricultural Department in this magazine, I certainly did not desire to
deceive anybody. I had not the remotest desire to play upon any one's
confidence with a practical joke, for he is a pitiful creature indeed who
will degrade the dignity of his humanity to the contriving of the witless
inventions that go by that name. I purposely wrote the thing as absurdly
and as extravagantly as it could be written, in order to be sure and not
mislead hurried or heedless readers: for I spoke of launching a triumphal
barge upon a desert, and planting a tree of prosperity in a mine--a tree
whose fragrance should slake the thirst of the naked, and whose branches
should spread abroad till they washed the chorea of, etc., etc. I
thought that manifest lunacy like that would protect the reader. But to
make assurance absolute, and show that I did not and could not seriously
mean to attempt an Agricultural Department, I stated distinctly in my
postscript that I did not know anything about Agriculture. But alas!
right there is where I made my worst mistake--for that remark seems to
have recommended my proposed Agriculture more than anything else. It
lets a little light in on me, and I fancy I perceive that the farmers
feel a little bored, sometimes, by the oracular profundity of
agricultural editors who "know it all." In fact, one of my
correspondents suggests this (for that unhappy squib has deluged me with
letters about potatoes, and cabbages, and hominy, and vermicelli, and
maccaroni, and all the other fruits, cereals, and vegetables that ever
grew on earth; and if I get done answering questions about the best way
of raising these things before I go raving crazy, I shall be thankful,
and shall never write obscurely for fun any more).
Shall I tell the real reason why I have unintentionally succeeded in
fooling so many people? It is because some of them only read a little of
the squib I wrote and jumped to the conclusion that it was serious, and
the rest did not read it at all, but heard of my agricultural venture at
second-hand. Those cases I could not guard against, of course. To write
a burlesque so wild that its pretended facts will not be accepted in
perfect good faith by somebody, is, very nearly an impossible thing to
do. It is because, in some instances, the reader is a person who never
tries to deceive anybody himself, and therefore is not expecting any one
to wantonly practise a deception upon him; and in this case the only
person dishonoured is the man who wrote the burlesque. In other
instances the "nub" or moral of the burlesque--if its object be to
enforce a truth--escapes notice in the superior glare of something in the
body of the burlesque itself. And very often this "moral" is tagged on
at the bottom, and the reader, not knowing that it is the key of the
whole thing and the only important paragraph in the article, tranquilly
turns up his nose at it and leaves it unread. One can deliver a satire
with telling force through the insidious medium of a travesty, if he is
careful not to overwhelm the satire with the extraneous interest of the
travesty, and so bury it from the reader's sight and leave him a joked
and defrauded victim, when the honest intent was to add to either his
knowledge or his wisdom. I have had a deal of experience in burlesques
and their unfortunate aptness to deceive the public, and this is why I
tried hard to make that agricultural one so broad and so perfectly
palpable that even a one-eyed potato could see it; and yet, as I speak
the solemn truth, it fooled one of the ablest agricultural editors in
America! _