The Editor's work is never done.He is drained incessantly, and no wonder that he dries up prematurely.Other people can attend banquets, weddings, &c.; visit halls of dazzling light, get inebriated, break windows, lick a man occasionally, and enjoy themselves in a variety of ways; but the Editor cannot.He must stick tenaciously to his quill.The press, like a sick baby, mustn't be left alone for a minute.If the press is left to run itself even for a day, some absurd person indignantly orders the carrier-boy to stop bringing "that infernal paper.There's nothing in it.I won't have it in the house!"The elegant Mantalini, reduced to mangle-turning, described his life as "a dem'd horrid grind." The life of the Editor is all of that.
But there is a good time coming, we feel confident, for the Editor.
A time when he will be appreciated.When he will have a front seat.
When he will have pie every day, and wear store clothes continually.
When the harsh cry of "stop my paper" will no more grate upon his ears.Courage, Messieurs the Editors! Still, sanguine as we are of the coming of this jolly time, we advise the aspirant for editorial honors to pause ere he takes up the quill as a means of obtaining his bread and butter.Do not, at least, do so until you have been jilted several dozen times by a like number of girls; until you have been knocked down-stairs several times and soused in a horse-pond;until all the "gushing" feelings within you have been thoroughly subdued; until, in short, your hide is of rhinoceros thickness.
Then, O aspirants for the bubble reputation at the press's mouth, throw yourselves among the inkpots, dust, and cobwebs of the printing office, if you will.
* * * Good my lord, will you see the Editors well bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used, for they are the abstract and brief chroniclers of the time.After your death you had better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.
Hamlet, slightly altered.
1.39.POPULARITY.
What a queer thing is popularity; Bill Pug Nose of the "Plug-Uglies"(The name given to an infamous gang of ruffians which once had its head-quarters in Baltimore.) acquires a world-wide reputation by smashing up the "champion of light weights," sets up a Saloon upon it, and realizes the first month; while our Missionary, who collected two hundred blankets last August, and at that time saved a like number of little negroes in the West Indies from freezing, has received nothing but the yellow fever.The Hon.Oracular M.
Matterson becomes able to withstand any quantity of late nights and bad brandy, is elected to Congress, and lobbies through contracts by which he realizes some 50,000 dollars; while private individuals lose 100,000 dollars by the Atlantic Cable.Contracts are popular--the cable isn't.Fiddlers, Prima Donnas, Horse Operas, learned pigs, and five-legged calves travel through the country, reaping "golden opinions," while editors, inventors, professors, and humanitarians generally, are starving in garrets.Revivals of religion, fashions, summer resorts, and pleasure trips, are exceedingly popular, while trade, commerce, chloride of lime, and all the concomitants necessary to render the inner life of denizens of cities tolerable, are decidedly non est.Even water, which was so popular and populous a few weeks agone, comes to us in such stinted sprinklings that it has become popular to supply it only from hydrants in sufficient quantities to raise one hundred disgusting smells in a distance of two blocks.Monsieur Revierre, with nothing but a small name and a large quantity of hair, makes himself exceedingly popular with hotel-keepers and a numerous progeny of female Flaunts and Blounts, while Felix Smooth and Mr.
Chink, who persistently set forth their personal and more substantial marital charms through the columns of "New York Herald,"have only received one interview each--one from a man in female attire, and the other from the keeper of an unmentionable house.
Popularity is a queer thing, very.If you don't believe us, try it!
1.40.A LITTLE DIFFICULTY IN THE WAY.
An enterprising traveling agent for a well-known Cleveland Tombstone Manufactory lately made a business visit to a small town in an adjoining county.Hearing, in the village, that a man in a remote part of the township had lost his wife, he thought he would go and see him, and offer him consolation and a gravestone, on his usual reasonable terms.He started.The road was a frightful one, but the agent persevered, and finally arrived at the bereaved man's house.Bereaved man's hired girl told the agent that the bereaved man was splitting fence rails "over in pastur, about two milds."The indefatigable agent hitched his horse and started for the "pastur." After falling into all manner of mudholes, scratching himself with briers, and tumbling over decayed logs, the agent at length found the bereaved man.In a subdued voice he asked the man if he had lost his wife.The man said he had.The agent was very sorry to hear of it, and sympathized with the man deeply in his great affliction; but death, he said, was an insatiate archer, and shot down all, both of high and low degree.Informed the man that "what was his loss was her gain," and would be glad to sell him a gravestone to mark the spot where the beloved one slept--marble or common stone, as he chose, at prices defying competition.The bereaved man said there was "a little difficulty in the way.""Haven't you lost your wife?" inquired the agent.
"Why, yes, I have," said the man, "but no gravestun ain't necessary:
you see the cussed critter ain't dead.SHE'S SCOOTED WITH ANOTHERMAN!"
The agent retired.
1.41.COLORED PEOPLE'S CHURCH.
