Do you write shorthand? You can handle a hot goose? Eh? used to? Could once? Please write some: let's Please take this hat and show me how see how it looks? it is put together. Curious-looking Have seen a great many queerly shaped characters, aren't they? hats in your time, no doubt? How many columns can you How many hats can you make in a day? write a day? Do you write by the column? Do you work by the piece? What? Don't write at all? Ah? Don't work any longer? Supposed every How strange!--and so on. hatter made his own hats!--and so on. The editor may be to blame for this state of things; but if so, his good-nature is responsible. He endures more than other men. He is often worried by the troubles of other people; but he never has been weaned from the milk of human kindness. He may be over-persuaded, he may be deceived, and editors have been fooled, like judge and jurors, by the perjured affidavit of apparently honorable men--but he still continues to believe in mankind. The chivalry of the politician toward the press is comprehended to a nicety by every man who has served as a newspaper correspondent at Washington. The average congressman thinks it clever to deceive a newspaper editor or correspondent. He believes they are to be "used," whenever possible, for the congressman's advantage. A correspondent is to be tricked or cajoled into praising the statesman, revising the bad English in his speeches, "saving the country and--the appropriations." All the charities require and demand his aid, and, I am ashamed to say (knowing as I do what a hollow mockery some of the alleged charities really are), generally get the assistance they ask. The chivalry of the press toward the public is unquestionable. The editor keeps awake nearly all night to serve it, and the facts are not altered because in best serving the public he serves himself. Journalism, I regret to say, is often spoken of as a "profession," and while we may accept the plebeian word "journalism," as describing a daily labor, I sincerely desire to enter a protest against its designation as a profession. It seems entirely proper to me that this word be relegated to the pedagogue, the chiropodist, and the barn-storming actor who so boldly assert a right to its use.