A GROWLER SOOTHED.
Givemfits said to Dr. Butterfield, "You asked me last evening if I ever
bought newspapers. I reply, Yes, and write for them too.
"But I see their degeneracy. Once you could believe nearly all they said;
now he is a fool who believes a tenth part of it. There is the New York
'Scandalmonger,' and the Philadelphia 'Prestidigitateur,' and the Boston
'Prolific,' which do nothing but hoodwink and confound the public mind. Ten
dollars will get a favorable report of a meeting, or as much will get it
caricatured. There is a secret spring behind almost every column. It
depends on what the editor had for supper the night before whether he wants
Foster hung or his sentence commuted. If the literary man had toast and
tea, as weak as this before me, he sleeps soundly, and next day says in his
columns that Foster ought not to be executed; he is a good fellow, and the
clergymen who went to Albany to get him pardoned were engaged in a holy
calling, and their congregations had better hold fast of them lest they go
up like Elijah. But if the editor had a supper at eleven, o'clock at night
of scallops fried in poor lard, and a little too much bourbon, the next day
he is headachy, and says Foster, the scalawag, ought to be hung, or beaten
to death with his own car-hook, and the ministers who went to Albany to get
him pardoned might better have been taking tea with some of the old ladies.
I have been behind the scenes and know all about it, and must admit that I
have done some of the bad work myself. I have on my writing-stand thirty
or forty books to discuss as a critic, and the column must be made up. Do
you think I take time to read the thirty or forty books? No. I first take a
dive into the index, a second dive into the preface, a third dive into the
four hundredth page, the fourth dive into the seventieth page, and then
seize my pen and do up the whole job in fifteen minutes. I make up my mind
to like the book or not to like it, according as I admire or despise the
author. But the leniency or severity of my article depends on whether the
room is cold and my rheumatism that day is sharp or easy. Speaking of these
things reminds me that the sermon which the Right Reverend Bishop
Goodenough preached last Sunday, on 'Growth in Grace,' was taken down and
brought to our office by a reporter who fell over the door-sill of the
sanctum so drunk we had to help him up and fish in his pockets for the
bishop's sermon on holiness of heart and life, which we were sure was
somewhere about him."
"Tut! tut!" cried Dr. Butterfield. "I think, Mr. Givemfits, you are
entirely mistaken. (The doctor all the while stirring the sugar in his
cup.) I think the printing-press is a mighty agency for the world's
betterment. If I were not a minister, I would be an editor. There are
Bohemians in the newspaper profession, as in all others, but do not
denounce the entire apostleship for the sake of one Judas. Reporters, as I
know them, are clever fellows, worked almost to death, compelled to keep
unseasonable hours, and have temptations to fight which few other
occupations endure. Considering the blunders and indistinctness of the
public speaker, I think they get things wonderfully accurate. The speaker
murders the king's English, and is mad because the reporter cannot
resuscitate the corpse. I once made a speech at an ice-cream festival amid
great embarrassments, and hemmed, and hawed, and expectorated cotton from
my dry mouth, and sweat like a Turkish bath, the adjectives, and the nouns,
and verbs, and prepositions of my address keeping an Irish wake; but the
next day, in the 'Johnstown Advocate,' my remarks read as gracefully as
Addison's 'Spectator.' I knew a phonographer in Washington whose entire
business it was to weed out from Congressmen's speeches the sins against
Anglo-Saxon; but the work was too much for him, and he died of delirium
tremens, from having drank too much of the wine of syntax, in his ravings
imagining that 'interrogations' were crawling over him like snakes, and
that 'interjections' were thrusting him through with daggers and 'periods'
struck him like bullets, and his body seemed torn apart by disjunctive
conjunctions. No, Mr. Givemfits, you are too hard. And as to the
book-critics whom you condemn, they do more for the circulation of books
than any other class, especially if they denounce and caricature, for then
human nature will see the book at any price. After I had published my book
on 'The Philosophy of Civilization,' it was so badgered by the critics and
called so many hard names that my publishers could not print it fast enough
to meet the demands of the curious. Besides, what would we do without the
newspaper? With, the iron rake of the telegraph it draws the whole world to
our door every morning. The sermon that the minister preached to five
hundred people on Sabbath the newspaper next day preaches to fifty
thousand. It takes the verses which the poet chimed in his small room of
ten feet by six, and rings them into the ears of the continent. The
cylinder of the printing-press is to be one of the wheels of the Lord's
chariot. The good newspapers will overcome the bad ones, and the
honey-bees will outnumber the hornets. Instead of the three or four
religious newspapers that once lived on gruel and pap, sitting down once a
week on some good man's door-step to rest, thankful if not kicked off, now
many of the denominations have stalwart journals that swing their scythe
through the sins of the world, and are avant couriers of the Lord's
coming."
As Dr. Butterfield concluded this sentence his face shone like a harvest
moon. We had all dropped our knives, and were looking at him. The Young
Hyson tea was having its mollifying effect on the whole company. Mr.
Givemfits had made way with his fourth cup (they were small cups, the set
we use for company), and he was entirely soothed and moderated in his
opinions about everything, and actually clapped his hands at Dr.
Butterfield's peroration. Even Miss Stinger was in a glow, for she had
drank large quantities of the fragrant beverage while piping hot, and in
her delight she took Givemfits' arm, and asked him if he ever meant to get
married. Miss Smiley smiled. Then Dr. Butterfield lifted his cup, and
proposed a toast which we all drank standing: "The mission of the
printing-press! The salubrity of the climate! The prospects ahead! The
wonders of Oolong and Young Hyson!"