Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 105.djvu/154

Rh of seven, and amongst working men who study the newspaper as their best possible instructor, Saturday is the day of all others, for publication.

To begin the history of the week, then, with Saturday. People generally imagine that this is the busiest day in the newspaper office, being the day on which it is printed. The fact is, that it has been printed before daylight, and there is little or nothings to be done on Saturday except to distribute the copies. While the radars have been slumbering, the printing-machine has been roaring up in its loft or down in its cellar; for it is the aim to get the newspaper laid on the breakfast-table with the coffee and toast. So far, indeed, from the publishing-day being the busiest, there is genially nobody on the premises till late in the evening, except the clerk at the counter. It is curious, by the way, to note how the sale of a newspaper will fluctuate. There is absolutely no rule of computation, so irregular is the public demand. It often happens that in a week when the editor has put forth all his strength, the sale is low; while in another, when he has done no more than is absolutely necessary for decency's sake, the sale is high. A forcible leader, and a goods selection of news, will often fall still-born; whilst a particular fact, a marriage paragraph, or an eulogium of the dead, will sell the paper in spite of columns of rubbish. The sale is, in truth, as great a chance as fishing, depending not so much on the bait as on the hunger of the customer. But this is the most certain criterion—if the market is either very good or very bad, the newspaper is sure to sell well. Some people buy newspapers as others take strong drink—if they are merry, to make themselves merrier still; if they are sad, for the sake of consolation.

During the first part of Saturday, as I have already said, the clerk in the publishing office is the only occupant of the premises. As the morning advances, he is reinforced by a personage well known to the public, at least in name—"the printer's devil," as the youngest apprentice is familiarly- styled, and whose business during the week consists in lighting the me» and sweeping the floors, reading the copy to the corrector o£ the press, running up- and down stairs between the editor and the printers, in and out of doors between the-printers and the public-house—anywhere, in short, that anybody has to send anything, and in learning the art and mystery of printing during the intervals. The printer's devil, I say, appears, and—at the very moment, perhaps, that before the readers he is bearing the burden of last week's typographical errors, or fathering some joke which the author prefers to perpetrate in his name—he commences his dirty work, anticipating; probably, with a chuckle, the time when he will be considered strong enough and fit for the miserable toil of staying up all night, helping to make the mess which he has to clear away for others. With his brush he makes a heap of the fragments of "copy" which strew the floor, sweeping together, it may be, a folio of a sparkling leader with a leaf of "a big cabbage," the beginning of a "horrid murder" with the end of a "marriage in high life"—making a literary mosaic more curious, than beautiful. With a pair of bellows, too, he disinters from the dust lots of "pie," that is, the loose letters which have fallen on the floor while the compositors have, been picking them up from the cases. After dinner—when the office must be in apple-pie order—the overseer; or one of the printers appointed to take charge of the printing-office for the day; comes in; happy is he