AUTHORS’ MISERIES.
As you are labouring on your great work (in a style, let us add, equal to the subject), Lady Anna Maria Tomnoddy’s compliments arrive, and she requests you will cast your eye over the accompanying manuscript in six volumes, “The Mysteries of Mayfair,” correct the errors, if any, and find a publisher for the same.
N.B.—You have in your bookcase Captain Bangle’s “Buffaloes and Banyan Trees,” in MS.; the Rev. Mr. Growl’s “Sermons to a Congregation at Swansea,” ditto ditto; Miss Piminy’s “Wildflower Coronal, a Wreath of Village Poesy”; and Mr. Clapperton’s six manuscript tragedies; of all of which you are requested to give your opinion.
Then there is a certain freedom about printers’ humour which we don’t find elsewhere, save among editors: but printers, like editors, have ever been privileged individuals, and we are told that when the recording angel observes a printer hold a bit of bent brass rule between his fingers, while he misses it with a hammer, the trustworthy scribe drops into a brown study, and pretends not to hear anything. Nor is it logical to assume that a printer is a saint because he sets up a hymn-book. You might as well regard an editor as a fool because you didn’t exactly agree with what was in his paper.
AUTHORS’ MISERIES.
Perhaps you flatter yourself that you have made an impression on Miss Flannigan (at Worthing), and you find her asleep over your favourite book.
Illustrative of this there is an excellent anecdote told by the late Max O’Rell in his book, A Frenchman in America.
A former proprietor of the New York Times and Post was wont every morning to select a text from the Bible to be printed above the leader. One morning, by some mischance, the text got lost, and Max tells us that the comps might have been heard asking in pretty loud stage whispers, “If anybody knew where that d—— text was?”
Perhaps the wit of the compositor is most amusing when it appeals to the eye. That is, when he gives rein to his fancy, and uses his types for suggesting witty ideas. Here is a very happy illustration of this kind of fun—