And yet though editors are invariably doleful about the capacity of the farmer in Iowa and points west, it would be quite inaccurate to suggest any fundamental pessimism. An editor is always optimistic, particularly when a contributor asks for his check. But it really is a sincere and deep grained hopefulness. No editor could live from day to day without the faculty or arguing himself into the belief that the next number of his magazine is not going to be quite so bad as the last one.
Unfortunately he is not content to be a solitary tippler in good cheer. He feels that it is his duty to discover authors and inspirit them. Indeed, the average editor cannot escape feeling that telling a writer to do something is almost the same thing as performing it himself.
The editorial mind, so called, is afflicted with the King Cole complex. Types subject to this delusion are apt to believe that all they need do to get a thing is to call for it. You may remember that King Cole called for his bowl just as if there were no such thing as a Volstead amendment. "What we want is humor," says an editor, and he expects the unfortunate author to trot around the corner and come back with a quart of quips.
An editor would classify "What we want is humor" as a piece of coöperation on his part. It seems to him a perfect division of labor. After all, nothing remains for the author to do except to write.
Sometimes the mogul of a magazine will be even more specific. We confessed to an editor once that we were not very fertile in ideas, and he said, "Never mind, I'll think up something for you."
"Let me see," he continued, and crinkled his brow in that profound way which editors have. Suddenly the wrinkles vanished and his face lighted up. "That's it," he cried. "I want you to go and do us a series something like Mr. Dooley." He leaned back and fairly beamed satisfaction. He had done his best to make a humorist out of us. If failure followed it could only be because of shortsightedness and stubbornness on our part. We had our assignment.
XXIV
WE HAVE WITH US THIS EVENING——
We have always wondered just what it is which frightens the after dinner speaker. He is protected by tradition, the Christian religion and the game laws. And yet he trembles. Perhaps he knows that he is going to be terrible, but it is common knowledge that after dinner speakers seldom reform. The life gets them. It was thought, once upon a time, that the practice was in some way connected with alcoholic stimulation, but this has since been disproved. After dinner speaking is a separate vice. Total abstainers from every other evil practice are not immune.
The chief fault is that an irrationally inverted formula has come into being. The after dinner speaker almost invariably begins with his apology. He is generally becomingly frank when he first gets to his feet. There is always a confident prophecy that the audience is not going to be very much interested in what he has to say and the admission that he is pretty sure to do the job badly. Unfortunately, no speaker ever succeeds in deterring himself by these forebodings of disaster. He never fails to go on and prove the truth of his own estimate of inefficiency.
Many men profess to find the greatest difficulty in getting to their feet. Perhaps this is sincere, but the task does not seem to be one-sixteenth as hard as sitting down again. People whose vision is perfect in every other respect suffer from a curious astigmatism which prevents them from recognizing a stopping point when they come to it. We suggest to some ingenious inventor that he devise a combination of time clock and trip hammer by which a dull, blunt instrument shall be liberated at the end of five minutes so that it may fall with great force, killing the after dinner speaker and amusing the spectators. The mechanical difficulties might be great, but the machine would be even more useful if it could be attuned in some way so that the hammer should fall, if necessary, before the expiration of the five minutes, the instant the speaker said, "That reminds me of the story about the two Irishmen."