Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 105.djvu/158

Rh best him. For now the struggle is against time. The compilation of to-day is hurried; then there is an accumulation of matter to be got through—reports of occurrences put aside until the arrival of the latest particulars, paragraphs, the sifting of which has been delayed until there is some certainty of their insertion, and other things to be written down; there are also the letters of correspondents to be licked into shape, and great is the labour and small the profit of the last. Infamous grammar, hideous syntax, execrable spelling—words expressing anything but what the writers really mean, chosen for their length instead of their pith—manuscripts too curious as regards caligraphy to be put before the printers, or too closely lined to be interpolated with the necessary corrections-such is the ordinary, or rather extraordinary, character of the communications from whence the editor gleans his local news. But still they are not to be neglected, for, trumpery as it may seem to those uninterested in the district, the local news is the bone and muscle of a country paper. To the task, then, the editor falls, searching for the needle in the bottle of hay, thrashing the grain of wheat from the bushel of chaff, cracking the covering of hard words in which the kernel of fact is encased, extracting the marrow from the dry bones; and the result is his original contribution to the news of the week, and the quid pro quo given to his contemporaries, for the matter of which he has rifled their columns. Towards evening the newspaper begins to assume something like the shape which he designs it shall take. The copy as it has been "set up," or put into type, has been "pulled;" that is, printed on slips of paper; the reader—who is often the editor himself, often the overseer, often the reporter, sometimes the proprietor, not unfrequently the young gentlemen or young ladies of the family—almost anybody, in short, who can be pressed into the brain-cracking work—the reader, I repeat, has read the proofs to detect the errors of the printers, and the "first form" of the newspaper—that is, two pages, if it consists of four, and four pages if it consists of eight—is "locked-up" and got out of the way; and perhaps printed off the same night.

Frequently whilst the editor is trying to get through this compiling and collating, this transcribing and composing, he also gets so bothered and worried that his powers become quite paralysed. He can't think, he can't 'write; for his mind wanders from the thing he is about to the next thing that is to be done, and the next, and the next, ad infinitum; and so runs the time away. Even when a leisure hour does come, he is often haunted by the "phantom of unreal work" which scares him out of his senses. But if he can write, after the day's work on Thursday, he sits down to write his leaders, assuming for the nonce the potential style of "we." In London, leader writing is a sole occupation; but in the country it is merely an incident of the editor's labour. Whilst the editor has been selecting his budget of news, he has also fixed upon topics for his articles, seized the points of the question, and perhaps, mentally sketched out the course of his arguments; and this, long before he is able to find time to secure his ideas by committing them to the safe custody of paper. It is surprising, then, that the leading articles of county papers are written so well as they are, seeing how the writer's time is exhausted, how his mind is distracted, how his strength is often