Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 January 1885 — Editing a Funny Column. [ARTICLE]

Editing a Funny Column.

In an ungaurded moment I applied for a position ou a rural paper to open a column of wit, fun, and frolic. The editor wrote me a long letter on the subject of wit, and gave me liis candid opinion of the aforesaid bird of varied hue. He said' that Ris readers were staid, homely, plain people, who always looked into the death and marriage items first. He also said that he had produced several funny items that had gone the rounds of the press, until they were bald-headed, toothless, and wrinkled. At the close he offered me the column, and added the dry fact that I’d have a hard row to hoe if I hoped to get up a seven-story reputation for bubling mirth in his paper. I Avas eager; I was champing the bit of wit, and longed to open the safetyvalve and submerge the entire press fraternity with the stupendous quality of my humor. The first week I gave the editor of the paper one entire column of fat, fresh an'd frisky fun. I read the mirth-oozing items over to my wife and she cried with joy. I gave my mother-in-law a whack at the funny business, and she knocked over the center-table and kicked the coal-scuttle galley west in her contortions of laughter. I knew I was cut out for a Bob Burdetti, or a Bill Nye. I got a lovely Tetter full of taffy from; the editor after my initial column had been issued. He said that it took two fanners from the cheese market to hold the compositor up to the case while he was setting up my matter. He also added that his wife’s sister, who read pi-oof, had gone and given her flame the chilly go by, trusting to the fates that the writer ot .the immense brain-matter svas single and pining for female condolence. I was puffed up to the seventh story of conceit. I knew I had struck my forte ,at last. I was cut out, basted and dried ftor a funny man of the great press. I rushed to my den and began another series of button-bursting, si le-splittiug mirth. I nibbled the pen-holder; P looked into the ink-bottle; I pulled down the curtain and lighted the lamp; I paced to and fro across the floor, and —finally I got a pun. I dallied with that pun as a school-boy toys with a green apple. I rolled that pun under my tongue like the sweet morsel we read of. I tossed it to and the confines of my mind. It was the best pun oi my life, I thought. I used up my column with that pun. It was the windiest pun you ever saw, -and long drawn out. The editor sent mv offering back with a printed slip cut from a famous leading funny publication. It was my pun; but got up far better than my funny brain could hope to ossav. It was a grounder, and, it floored me. JL cremated that pun. I sat down again and crury-eombed Pr gasus. I put in r an occasional slip from a funny sheet, and added the usual witty respome. "When I got through with my work, my manuscript looked like a map of the Franco-China seat of war. The editor sent it back with regrets. He offered me the agricultural department. I took it. I’ve learned that I know a sight more about cows, plows, patentreapers, and farm truck than I do about fun.— H. S. Keller, in Jingo.