AN EDITOR'S CHIP-BASKET.
On our way out the newspaper rooms we stumbled over the basket in which is
deposited the literary material we cannot use. The basket upset and
surprised us with its contents. On the top were some things that looked
like fifteen or twenty poems. People outside have no idea of the amount of
rhyme that comes to a printing office. The fact is that at some period in
every one's life he writes "poetry." His existence depends upon it. We
wrote ten or fifteen verses ourselves once. Had we not written them just
then and there, we might not be here. They were in long metre, and "Old
Hundred" would have fitted them grandly.
Many people are seized with the poetic spasm when they are sick, and their
lines are apt to begin with.
"O mortality! how frail art thou!"
Others on Sabbath afternoons write Sabbath-school hymns, adding to the
batch of infinite nonsense that the children are compelled to swallow. For
others a beautiful curl is a corkscrew pulling out canto after canto.
Nine-tenths of the rhyme that comes to a printing office cannot be used.
You hear a rough tear of paper, and you look around to see the managing
editor adding to the responsibilities of his chip-basket. What a way that
is to treat incipient Tennysons and Longfellows!
Next to the poetic effusions tumble out treatises on "constitutional law"
heavy enough to break the basket. We have noticed that after a man has got
so dull he can get no one willing to hear him he takes to profound
exposition. Out from the same chip-basket rolls a great pile of
announcements that people want put among the editorials, so as to save the
expense of the advertising column. They tell us the article they wish
recommended will have a highly beneficial effect upon the Church and world.
It is a religious churn, or a moral horse-rake, or a consecrated fly trap.
They almost get us crying over their new kind of grindstone, and we put the
letter down on the table while we get out our pocket-handkerchief, when our
assistant takes hold the document and gives it a ruthless rip, and pitches
it into the chip-basket.
Next in the pile of torn and upset things is the speech of some one on the
momentous occasion of the presentation of a gold-headed cane, or silver
pitcher, or brass kettle for making preserves. It was "unexpected," a
"surprise" and "undeserved," and would "long be cherished." "Great
applause, and not a dry eye in the house," etc., etc. But there is not much
room in a paper for speeches. In this country everybody speaks.
An American is in his normal condition when he is making a speech. He is
born with "fellow-citizens" in his mouth, and closes his earthly life by
saying, "One word more, and I have done." Speeches being so common,
newspaper readers do not want a large supply, and so many of these
utterances, intended to be immortal, drop into oblivion through that
inexhaustible reservoir, the editorial chip-basket.
But there is a hovering of pathos over this wreck of matter. Some of these
wasted things were written for bread by intelligent wives with drunken
husbands trying to support their families with the pen. Over that mutilated
manuscript some weary man toiled until daybreak. How we wish we could have
printed what they wrote! Alas for the necessity that disappoints the
literary struggle of so many women and men, when it is ten dollars for that
article or children gone supperless to bed!
Let no one enter the field of literature for the purpose of "making a
living" unless as a very last resort. There are thousands of persons to-day
starving to death with a steel pen in their hand. The story of Grub street
and poets living on thin soup is being repeated all over this land,
although the modern cases are not so conspicuous. Poverty is no more
agreeable because classical and set in hexameters. The hungry author cannot
breakfast on "odes to summer." On this, cold day how many of the literati
are shivering! Martyrs have perished in the fire, but more persons have
perished for lack of fire. Let no editor through hypercriticism of
contributed articles add to this educated suffering.
What is that we hear in the next room? It is the roar of a big fire as it
consumes unavailable literary material--epics, sonnets, homilies,
tractates, compilations, circulars, dissertations. Some of them were
obscure, and make a great deal of smoke. Some of them were merry, and
crackle. All of them have ended their mission and gone down, ashes to ashes
and dust to dust.