Anyway, he staggered into his room, and although he could hear the
audience outside in their wild, tumultuous encore, he refused to come
before the curtain, but locked his door and sobbed himself to sleep,
How often do we forget the finer feelings of others and ignore their
sorrow while we revel in some great joy.
“We.”
The world is full of literary people to-day, and they are divided into
three classes, viz: Those who have written for the press, those who are
writing for the press, and those who want to write for the press. Of the
first, there are those who tried it and found that they could make more in
half the time at something else, and so quit the field, and those who
failed to touch the great heart and pocketbook of the public, and
therefore subsided. Those who are writing for the press now, whether
putting together copy by the mile within the sound of the rumbling engine
and press, or scattered through the country writing more at their leisure,
find that they have to lay aside every weight and throw off all the
incumbrances of the mossy past.
One thing, however, still clings to the editor like a dab of paste on a
white vest or golden fleck of scrambled egg on a tawny moustache. One
relic of barbarism rears in gaunt form amid the clash and hurry and rush
of civilization, and in the dazzling light of science and smartness.
It is “we.”
The budding editor of the rural civilizer for the first time peels his
coat and sharpens his pencil to begin the work of changing the great
current of public opinion. He is strong in his desire to knock error and
wrong galley west. He has buckled on his armor to paralyze monopoly and
purify the ballot He has hitched up his pantaloons with a noble resolve
and covered his table with virgin paper.
He is young, and he is a little egotistical, also. He wants to say, “I
believe” so and so, but he can't. Perspiration breaks out all over him. He
bites his pencil, and looks up with his clenched hand in his hair. The
slimy demon of the editor's life is there, sitting on the cloth bound
volume containing the report of the United States superintendent of swine
diseases.
Wherever you find a young man unloading a Washington hand press to fill a
long-felt want, there you will find the ghastly and venomous “we,” ready
to look over the shoulder of the timid young mental athlete. Wherever you
find a ring of printer's ink around the door knob, and the snowy towel on
which the foreman wipes the pink tips of his alabaster fingers, you will
find the slimy, scaly folds of “we” curled up in some neighboring corner.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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