Frostburg Mining Journal

Sensations of an Editor.

The sensations of an editor on first glancing over his paper and detecting errors in it are somewhat different from those experienced by the reader on making like discoveries. The latter is either amused at the blunder or incensed at the carelessness which causes it, and in both cases arrives at the conclusion that the trouble is avoidable, and that the editor is to blame for not avoiding it. He never saw an editor take his first glance over a copy of the edition. Perhaps the edition is worked off when this opportunity is afforded the weary man. He has either trusted the proofs to some one else, or read them himself; but the feeling of dread is just as great in the latter as in the former case. The proof reader may not consult the copy, and so perpetuate the blunders of the compositors, and perhaps the compositor may neglect to mend the wrong he has done, although his attention is plainly called to it on the proof.

When about to make this preparatory survey, the editor does not take a cigar in his mouth and elevate his heels to the desk, as is the popular tradition. Dying men don't do that way, you know, and we have come to the conclusion that an editor examining his paper feels very much like a man who is about to pass into eternity. He reads along carefully and slowly, like a man feeling his way across a piece of doubtful ice. Suddenly his face becomes distorted with an awful pain. He doesn't cry out—he doesn't rant. The anguish within him is so broad and intense that he dares not trust it to words. He just simply reaches up and takes a handful of his own hair, and tugs at it until the tears come in his eyes. Then he picks up the paper, which he has taken the precaution to kick across the room on discovering the error, and resumes the torturing search; for after all it is but a search for errors and agony, and not an agreeable and instructive perusal.

Suddenly he groans—not an expectant groan, like from one who hopes for help to reach him through it, but the groan of one who is beyond the reach of hope, who feels that the warm sunshine, the kind glance of friendship, the beautiful flowers, and the song of birds are gone forever and forever from him. It is a smothered groan, followed by a kick out of the leg, as if the party had in that moment taken an eternal leave of all earthly things.

There is still another search with aching eyes and throbbing brain, and then the paper is smashed down on the floor, and the infuriated man bounds up from his chair, and catches both hands in his hair, and dances around like a madman. He doesn't call upon Heaven and earth to witness what he is going to do, and to blight him if he should not do it. He doesn't dash into the composing-room and scorch the men with his wrath. Even this slight relief is denied him.

The paper is worked off, and diserrutiny that would cheerfully attack a needle in a haystack would fall paralyzed before a search for the author of the great wrong. He doesn't say anything at all—not a single intelligible word escapes his ashen lips, as he holds his hair and prances about in the dingy solitude of his room. And when he is done, he sits down again and groans, and afterwards puts on his hat, and rushes forth into the street—rushes anywhere to get away from the face of man, to get away from himself and everything belonging to himself.