“I do,” he replied. “I lost six penknives in this room within a fortnight; those blue-pencilled reporters use up a lot of knives, and they never buy any, so I brought down this old razor. They’ll not steal that.”
And they didn’t.
But I lost all respect for that sub-editor.
CHAPTER VII.—SOME EXTINCT TYPES.
A perturbed spirit—The loss of a fortune—A broken bank—A study in bimetallism—Auri sacra fames—A rough diamond—A friend of the peerage—And of Dublin stout—His weaknesses—The Quarterly Review—The dilemma—An amateur hospital nurse—A terrible night—Benvenuto Cellini—A subtle jest—The disappearance of the jester—An appropriated leaderette—An appropriated anecdote—An appropriated quatrain.
ONCE I saw a sub-editor actually within easy reach of suicide. It was not the duplicating of a five-column speech in flimsy, nor was it that the foreman printer had broken his heart. It was that he had been the victim of a heartless theft. His savings of years had been carried off in the course of a single night. So he explained to me with “tears in his eyes, distraction in’s aspect,” when I came down to the office one evening. He was walking up and down his room, with three hours’ arrears of unopened telegrams on his desk and a p.p.c. note from the foreman beneath a leaden “rule,” used as a paper weight; for the foreman, being, as usual, a conscientious man, invariably promised to hand in his notice at sundown if kept waiting for copy.
“What on earth is the matter?” I inquired.
“Is it neuralgia or——”