The young lady got her five pounds, and, having a considerable interest in the stocking of a farm, purchased with it an active young boar which, in an impulse of flattery, she named after me, and which, so far as I have been able to gather, is doing very well, and has already seen his children’s children.
When I asked the young lady why she had called the animal after me, she said it was because he was a bore. She had a graceful wit.
In a weak moment this editor confided to me that he was engaged in writing a book—“A History of the Orange” was to be the title, he told me; and he added that I could have no idea of the trouble it was causing him; but there he was wrong. After this he was in the habit of writing a note to me about once a week, asking me if I would oblige him by doing his work for him, as all his time was engrossed by his “History.” It appears to me rather melancholy that the lack of enterprise among publishers is so great that this work has not yet been given a chance of appearing. I looked forward to it to clear up many doubtful points of great interest. Up to the present, for instance, no intelligent effort has been made to determine if it was the introduction of the orange into Great Britain that brought about the Sunday-school treat, or if the orange was imported in order to meet the legitimate requirements of this entertainment.
Human nature—-and there is a good deal of it in a large manufacturing centre—could not be restrained in the neighbourhood of such a relic of a past generation, and, consequently, that form of pleasantry known as the hoax was constantly attempted upon him. One morning the correspondence columns, which he was supposed to edit with scrupulous care, appeared headed with an account of the discovery of some ancient pottery bearing a Latin inscription—the most venerable and certainly the most transparent of newspaper hoaxes.
It need scarcely be said that there was an extraordinary demand for copies of the issue of that day; but luckily the thing was discovered in time to disappoint a large number of those persons who came to the office to mock at the simplicity of the good old soul, who fancied he had found a congenial topic when he received the letter headed with an appeal to archæologists.
Is there a more contemptible creature in the world than the newspaper hoaxer? The wretch who can see fun in obtaining the publication of some filthy phrase in a newspaper that is certain to be read by numbers of women, should, in my mind, be treated as the flinger of a dynamite bomb among a crowd of innocent people. The sender of a false notice of a marriage, a birth, or a death, is usually difficult to bring to justice, but when found, he—or she—should be treated as a social leper. The pain caused by such heartless hoaxes is incalculable.
Sometimes a careless reporter, or foreman printer, is unwittingly the means of causing much annoyance, and even consternation, by allowing an obituary notice to appear prematurely. On every well-managed paper there is a set of pigeon-holed obituaries of eminent persons, local as well as national. When it is almost certain that one of them is at the point of death, the sketch is written up to the latest date, and frequently put in type, to be ready in case the news of the death should arrive when the paper is going to press. Now, I have known of several cases in which the “set-up” obituary notice contrived to appear before the person to whom it referred had breathed his last. This is undoubtedly a very painful occurrence, and in some cases it may actually precipitate the incident which it purports to record. Personally, I should not consider myself called on to die because a newspaper happened to publish an account of my death; but I know of at least one case in which a man actually succumbed out of compliment to a newspaper that had accidentally recorded his death.
That person was not made of the same fibre as a certain eminent surgeon with whom I was well acquainted. He was thoughtful enough to send for a reporter on one Monday evening, and said that as he did not wish the pangs of death to be increased by the reflection that a ridiculous sketch of his career would be published in the newspapers, he thought he would just dictate three-quarters of a column of such a character as would allow of his dying without anything on his mind. Of course the reporter was delighted, and commenced as usual:—