Knoxville Weekly Chronicle

Dead-Heads.

The following, from the pen of Wm. T. Tinsley, of the Lyons (N. Y.) Republican, will be appreciated by newspaper editors who have been victims of the nuisance of which the writer complains:

It is common for certain classes of people to look upon newspaper editors as 'dead-heads' par excellence. But the truth is, there is no class of people so remorselessly and continuously filched from and imposed upon by dead-headism in myriad shapes, as these very newspaper editors themselves. We will give an instance or two, by way of illustration.

There is the man who has patented a new sort of thingumbob, for 'regulating the heat of stoves.' He comes to us with a specimen of his thingumbob, and tells us it is the greatest blessing ever invented; it will save lots of money for poor people; only let it get into general use, and the community will rise up and call him blessed. He wants us to publish his invention through our columns for nothing; he pesters us with it, till we are strongly tempted to rise up and call him the reverse of blessed, and show him the door. However, we don't; we are too good-natured and too overwhelmingly polite. We don't even tell him he is a dead-head.

There are the associations that get up schemes for benevolent purposes. Of course the editor must do their advertising for nothing; it 'won't cost him any thing' to give them a free notice. Perhaps he obliges them, and perhaps he shows them his advertising rates. Some of them, no doubt, are excellent people, and believe themselves in the right. Whatever else they are, however, they are dead-heads.

There are the temperance societies and missionary associations, and moral-reform agencies, and associations for the furnishing of the Hottentots with flannel drawers and cod-liver oil. 'Can you ask us to pay you for advertising?' 'Can you refuse to put in our notices of meetings, and so on, and have the hardihood to ask us for money when the poor Hottentots are perishing with cold?' Certainly not, dear dead-heads. Fetch on your notices, we will print them, provided they are not too long; but remember you are dead-heads.-Rowell's Reporter.