I have suggested the possibility of the record of a death in a public print having a disastrous effect upon a sick man, and the certainty of its causing pain to his relatives. This view was not taken by the eccentric proprietor to whom I have already alluded. Upon one occasion he heard casually that a man named Robinson had just died. He hastened to his office, found a reporter, and told him to write a paragraph regretting the death of Mr. Richard Robinson. He assumed that it was Richard Robinson who was dead, but it so happened that it was Mr. Thomas Robinson, although Mr. Richard Robinson had been in feeble health for some time. Now, when the son of the living Mr. Robinson called upon the proprietor the next day to state that his father had read the paragraph recording his death, and that the shock had completely prostrated him, the proprietor turned round upon him, and said that Mr. Robinson and his family should rather feel extremely grateful for the appearance of a paragraph of so complimentary a character. Young Mr. Robinson, fearing that the next move on the part of the proprietor would be to demand payment for the paragraph at scale rates, begged that his intrusion might be pardoned; and hurried away congratulating himself at having escaped very easily.
Editors are always supposed to know nearly everything, and they nearly always do. In this respect they differ materially from the representatives of other professions. If you were to ask the average clergyman—if there is such a thing as an average clergyman—what he thought of the dramatic construction of a French vaudeville, he would probably feel hurt; but if an editor failed to give an intelligent opinion on this subject, as well as upon the tendencies to Socinianism displayed in the sermon of an eminent Churchman, he would be regarded as unfit for his business. You can get an intelligent opinion from an editor on almost any subject; but you are lucky if you can get an intelligent opinion on any one subject from the average professional man—a lawyer, of course, excepted.
But undoubtedly curious specimens of editors might occasionally have been found in the smaller newspaper offices in the provinces long ago. More than twenty years have passed since the sub-editor of a rather important paper in a town in the Midlands interviewed, on a matter of professional etiquette, the editor—he was an Irishman—of a struggling organ in the same town.
It appeared that the chief reporter of the sub-editor’s paper had given some paragraph of news to a brother on the second paper, and yet when the latter was respectfully asked for an equivalent, he refused it; hence the need for diplomatic representations.
“I say that our reporters must have a quid pro quo in every case where they have given a par. to yours,” said the sub-editor, who was entrusted with the negotiations.
“Must have a what?” asked the Irish editor. “A quid pro quo,” said the sub-editor. “Now I’ve come here for the quid and I don’t mean to go until I get it.”
The editor looked at him, then felt for something in his waistcoat pocket. Producing a piece of that sort of tobacco known as Limerick twist, he bit it in two, and offered one portion to the sub-editor, saying, “There’s your quid for you; but, so help me Gad, I’ve only got what you see in my mouth to last me till morning.”