1.37. ABOUT EDITORS.
We hear a great deal, and something too much, about the poverty of editors. It is common for editors to parade their poverty and joke about it in their papers. We see these witticisms almost every day of our lives. Sometimes the editor does the "vater vorks business," as Mr. Samuel Weller called weeping, and makes pathetic appeals to his subscribers. Sometimes he is in earnest when he makes these appeals, but why "on airth" does he stick to a business that will not support him decently? We read of patriotic and lofty-minded individuals who sacrifice health, time, money, and perhaps life, for the good of humanity, the Union, and that sort of thing, but we don't SEE them very often. We must say that we could count up all the lofty patriots in this line that we have ever seen, during our brief but chequered and romantic career, in less than half a day. A man who clings to a wretchedly paying business, when he can make himself and others near and dear to him fatter and happier by doing something else, is about as near an ass as possible, and not hanker after green grass and corn in the ear. The truth is, editors as a class are very well fed, groomed and harnessed. They have some pains that other folk do not have, and they also have some privileges which the community in general can't possess. While we would not advise the young reader to "go for an editor," we assure him he can do much worse. He mustn't spoil a flourishing blacksmith or popular victualler in making an indifferent editor of himself, however. He must be endowed with some fancy and imagination to enchain the public eye. It was Smith, we believe, or some other man with an odd name, who thought Shakespeare lacked the requisite fancy and imagination for a successful editor.
To those persons who can't live by printing papers we would say, in the language of the profligate boarder when dunned for his bill, being told at the same time by the keeper of the house that he couldn't board people for nothing, "Then sell out to somebody who can!" In other words, fly from a business which don't remunerate. But as we intimated before, there is much gammon in the popular editorial cry of poverty.
Just now we see a touching paragraph floating through the papers to the effect that editors don't live out half their years; that, poor souls! they wear themselves out for the benefit of a cold and unappreciating world. We don't believe it. Gentle reader, don't swallow it. It is a footlight trick to work on your feelings. For ourselves, let us say, that unless we slip up considerably on our calculations, it will be a long time before our fellow-citizens will have the melancholy pleasure of erecting to our memory a towering monument of Parian marble on the Public Square.