"Oh, pray don't, Maria—I don't think it would do any good. Alice is very set in her way, and it might put her up to make something of it more than there is."
"Oh, never fear me," said Aunt Maria, nodding her head; "I understand Alice, and know just what needs to be said. I sha'n't do her any harm, you may be sure," and Aunt Maria, espying her omnibus afar, ran briskly down the steps, thus concluding the conference.
Now it happened that adjoining the parlor where this conversation had taken place was a little writing-cabinet which Mr. Van Arsdel often used for the purposes of letter-writing. On this morning, when his wife supposed him out as usual at his office, he had retired there to attend to some correspondence. The entrance was concealed by drapery, and so he had been an unintentional and unsuspected but much amused listener to Aunt Maria's adjurations to his wife on his behalf.
All through his subsequent labors of the pen, he might have been observed to pause from time to time and laugh to himself. The idea of lying as a quiet dead weight on the wheels of the progress of his energetic relation was something vastly pleasing to the dry and secretive turn of his humor—and he rather liked it than otherwise.
"We shall see whether I am losing my faculties," he said to himself, as he gathered up his letters and departed.
[CHAPTER IV.]
EVA HENDERSON TO HARRY'S MOTHER.
My Dear Mother: Harry says I must do all the writing to you and keep you advised of all our affairs, because he is so driven with his editing and proofreading that letter-writing is often the most fatiguing thing he can do. It is like trying to run after one has become quite out of breath.
The fact is, dear mother, the demands of this New York newspaper life are terribly exhausting. It's a sort of red-hot atmosphere of hurry and competition. Magazines and newspapers jostle each other, and run races, neck and neck, and everybody connected with them is kept up to the very top of his speed, or he is thrown out of the course. You see, Bolton and Harry have between them the oversight of three papers—a monthly magazine for the grown folk, another for the children, and a weekly paper. Of course there are sub-editors, but they have the general responsibility, and so you see they are on the qui vive all the time to keep up; for there are other papers and magazines running against them, and the price of success seems to be eternal vigilance. What is exacted of an editor now-a-days seems to be a sort of general omniscience. He must keep the run of everything,—politics, science, religion, art, agriculture, general literature; the world is alive and moving everywhere, and he must know just what's going on and be able to have an opinion ready made and ready to go to press at any moment. He must tell to a T just what they are doing in Ashantee and Dahomey, and what they don't do and ought to do in New York. He must be wise and instructive about currency and taxes and tariffs, and able to guide Congress; and then he must take care of the Church,—know just what the Old Catholics are up to, the last new kink of the Ritualists, and the right and wrong of all the free fights in the different denominations. It really makes my little head spin just to hear what they are getting up articles about. Bolton and Harry are kept on the chase, looking up men whose specialties lie in these lines to write for them. They have now in tow a Jewish Rabbi, who is going to do something about the Talmud, or Targums, or something of that sort; and a returned missionary from the Gaboon River, who entertained Du Chaillu and can speak authentically about the gorilla; and a lively young doctor who is devoting his life to the study of the brain and nervous system. Then there are all sorts of writing men and women sending pecks and bushels of articles to be printed, and getting furious if they are not printed, though the greater part of them are such hopeless trash that you only need to read four lines to know that they are good for nothing; but they all expect them to be re-mailed with explanations and criticisms, and the ladies sometimes write letters of wrath to Harry that are perfectly fearful.