Not at all.--Only self-reliance, one of the most available qualities for getting on in the world; for, if a man does not believe in himself, how on earth can he expect other people to believe in him? "Guess" I posed you there!--to use one of my patent Americanisms. Besides, an American "editor," if you please, is of a very different stamp to an English one. The "learned lexicographer"--and pedantic old bore, by the way--Doctor Johnson, defined the individual in question to be "one who prepares or revises any literary work for publication;" and, we generally associate the name with the supreme head of a journalistic staff--he who is addressed indignantly as "sir" by those weak-minded persons who write letters to newspapers, and who signs himself familiarly "Ed." But, at the other side of the Atlantic, the term bears a much wider application, extending to all "connected with the press"-- from the "head cook and bottle-washer," down, nearly, to that bottle imp, the printer's "devil." Political writers; correspondents, "special" and "local;" reviewers; reporters; stenographers, or "gallery" men; dramatic and musical critics; "paragraphists"--the new name for fire and murder manifolders, and other "flimsy" compilers; and, penny-a-liners:--each and all, are, severally and collectively, "editors," beneath the star-spangled banner of equality and freedom. Hence, there was not so much effrontery after all in my applying for the position, eh? The proprietor of the paper whom I now canvassed did not think so, at least; and _he_ was the party chiefly concerned in the affair besides myself; so, I should like to know what _you've_ got to do with it? He was a "Down-easter," a class of American I had already learnt specially to dislike--the ideal and real, "Yankee" of the States; but, he spoke to the point, as most of them do, without any waste of words or travelling round the subject--more than can be said for some "Britishers" I know! He was leaning over the counter of the advertisement office as I entered, settling some calculation of greenbacks with the cashier, and "guessed," ere I had opened my mouth to explain my presence, that I had come about that "vacancy up-stairs." "Been in the newspapering line before?" was his next interrogatory--a very pertinent one; for, Transatlantic journalists, as a rule, manage to try every trade and calling previously to sinking down to "literature"-- similarly to some of those bookseller's "hacks" over here who mortgage themselves to flash publishers when all other means of livelihood have failed them. When I answered "Yes" to this question, he did not wait to hear anything further. "Go up-stairs and try your hand," said he--"we'll soon see what you'll amount to, I reckon. We don't want any references here. We take a man as we find him. Guess I'll give you twenty-five dollars a week, anyhow, for one week sartain; and then, if we suit each other, we can raise the pile bimeby. Say, are you on?"