The Ottawa Free Trader

An Editor Fifty Years Ago.
The school books and other publications have no doubt, made many of our readers acquainted with the name of Joseph Dennie, editor of the Farmer's Museum, at Walpole, New Hampshire, towards the close of the last century, and subsequently of the Port Folio at Philadelphia. He was a graduate at Harvard, and established himself as a lawyer at Walpole. His articles and particularly his essays under the title of "Lay Preacher" attracted much attention. The latter were so popular, and regarded at the period as such fine specimens of eloquent diction, that they were collected and published in a volume. Dennie was the most popular editor of his time, and some idea of his appearance in the daily walks of life may be gathered from a recent description of him by Joseph T. Buckingham, Esq., in the Boston Courier. He says:
Dennie, in person was about the middle size—rather above than below it. His dress when he appeared in the street on a pleasant day, approached to the highest notch of fashion. He wore a pea-green coat, white vest, nankeen small clothes, white silk stockings, and shoes or pumps, fastened with large silver buckles. His small clothes were tied at the knee with ribbon of nankeen color, in bows, with the ends reaching nearly to the ankles. His hair in front was well larded with pomatum, frizzled and powdered under the skillful hand of the village barber: behind, his hair was enriched by the addition of a large queue, (called vulgarly the false tail,) which enclosed in some yards of ribbons, reached half way down his back.
The same writer has the following anecdote respecting Mr. Dennie's composition of the Lay Preacher:
His manuscript was often given out by a paragraph at a time, and sometimes written in the printing office, while the compositor was waiting to put it in type. One of the best of the Lay Preacher's sermons was written at a village tavern, directly opposite the printing office, in a chamber where Dennie and his companions were amusing themselves with cards, and the refreshments usually attendant on that recreation. It was delivered to me at four or five different times. If he was engaged in a game when I called for a copy he would ask some one to play his hand for him while he gave the scroll his due. When I made the last errand for the concluding paragraph of the sermon he was so much interested in his game, that he directed me to call again, but his most peculiar friend said—"No, Dennie; I'll write the improvement of the subject for you"
-He accordingly wrote the concluding portion of the sermon, and Dennie never saw it till it was printed.