'Very well, then,' said De Haan, struck with a sudden thought; 'it is
true Mr. Leon cannot do all the work. I know a young fellow who'll be
just the very thing. He'll come for a pound a week.'
'But I'll come for a pound a week,' said Ebenezer.
'Yes, but you won't get it,' said Schlesinger impatiently.
'_Sha_, Ebenezer!' said old Sugarman imperiously.
De Haan thereupon hunted up a young gentleman who dwelt in his mind as
'Little Sampson,' and straightway secured him at the price named. He
was a lively young Bohemian, born in Australia, who had served an
apprenticeship on the Anglo-Jewish press, worked his way up into the
larger journalistic world without, and was now engaged in organising a
comic-opera touring company, and in drifting back again into Jewish
journalism. This young gentleman, who always wore long curling locks,
an eyeglass, and a romantic cloak which covered a multitude of
shabbinesses, fully allayed Raphael's fears as to the difficulties of
editorship.
'Obituaries!' he said scornfully; 'you rely on me for that. The people
who are worth chronicling are sure to have lived in the back numbers
of our contemporaries, and I can always hunt them up in the Museum. As
for the people who are not, their families will send them in, and your
only trouble will be to conciliate the families of those you ignore.'
'But about all those meetings?' said Raphael.
'I'll go to some,' said the sub-editor good-naturedly, 'whenever they
don't interfere with the rehearsals of my opera. You know, of course,
I am bringing out a comic opera, composed by myself. Some lovely tunes
in it! One goes like this: "Ta-ra-ra-ta, ta-dee-dum-dee." That'll
knock 'em. Well, as I was saying, I'll help you as much as I can find
time for. You rely on me for that.'
'Yes,' said poor Raphael, with a sickly smile; 'but suppose neither of
us goes to some important meeting.'
'No harm done. God bless you! I know the styles of all our chief
speakers--ahem, ha!--pauperisation of the East End, ha!--I would
emphatically say that this scheme--ahem!--his lordship's untiring zeal
for--hum!--the welfare of--and so on. Ta-dee-dum-da, ta-ra, rum-dee.
They always send on the agenda beforehand. That's all I want, and I'll
lay you twenty to one I'll turn out as good a report as any of our
rivals. You rely on me for _that_. I know exactly how debates go. At
the worst I can always swop with another reporter--a prize
distribution for an obituary; or a funeral for a concert.'
'And do you really think we two between us can fill up the paper every
week?' said Raphael doubtfully.
Little Sampson broke into a shriek of laughter, dropped his eyeglass,
and collapsed helplessly into the coal-scuttle. The committee-men
looked up from their confabulations in astonishment.
'Fill up the paper! Ho, ho, ho!' roared Little Sampson, still doubled
up. 'Evidently _you've_ never had anything to do with papers. Why, the
reports of London and provincial sermons alone would fill three papers
a week.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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