[Exit Mr. Pica; and a minute after, enter reading boy, in a hurry.
Boy. Copy—if you please, Sir!
Editor. I have just given Mr. Pica half a column.
Boy. Oh—I beg your pardon, Sir—I did not see Mr. Pica—I came from down stairs. [Exit.
Editor: (Puts his hands into his breeches’ pockets again, and begins to whistle a tune.) This will not do—-I must write something—but what it is to be about I know no more than the monument. (Nibs his pen—settles his inkstand—and gets his paper ready). The parliament is up—the law courts have adjourned for the long vacation—the Opera House and the Winter Theatres have closed—and at the Haymarket and English Opera House, they have both brought out pieces which are having a run—nothing stirring—not even a case of decent oppression in a night constable—or of tyranny in a police magistrate. Whigs and Tories have shaken hands, and political delinquencies are too common to be either new or scandalous. The editor of a daily paper may be aptly compared to a galley slave. When the winds roar, and the tempest is abroad, and the waves swell, his bark moves along swiftly; but when the calm comes, and the sky is serene, and the breeze is hushed, and the sea is smooth, it is then he must ply the oar, and tug, and pull, and toil, to give the vessel motion.—( Takes his pen and writes furiously.) That will do for one of those short leaders * about nothing—. which look very much as if they alluded to something that could not be mentioned, (Reads.)—“There are certain rumours afloat—upon a delicate subject which has lately occasioned a great sensation in particular quarters. We are in possession of facts connected with this extraordinary affair, which we may perhaps feel ourselves at liberty to mention in a few days. Meanwhile, all we can say at present is, that disclosures must take place, however painful they may be to more than one distinguished individual. We shall only add, that the Duke of Wellington left town yesterday in his travelling chariot, with four horses, for Windsor, after a private interview of nearly three hours with an Illustrious Personage; and that it is reported his Grace ordered summonses for a cabinet council this day, before his departure from London. We shall not lose sight of this business.” (Rings the Printer’s bell—Mr. Pica enters.) Make this the first leader, and you may as well put it in double leads. **
* “Leaders”, are those important articles in a paper, which
are printed in large letters, and wherein the editorial Weis supposed to utter oracles de omnibus rebus.
** “Double leads” is a technical phrase for a mode of
printing which is employed only when an article is either
supposed to be, or is wished to be supposed, super-import-
ant. The lines stand wide apart, and look like the bars of a
gridiron.
Mr. P. Very well, Sir. There’s a long police case just come in, of a baronet’s daughter taken up for shoplifting; and an account of the bursting of a gasometer, which killed eleven men, three boys, and an old woman, who lived in a front garret over the way.
Editor. Use them both, the shop-lifting under the head of “Mysterious Charge of Theft,” and the accident to the gasometer under that of “Tremendous Explosion!—Fifteen Lives Lost!”
Mr. P. We shall do better with the ads. than I expected. Robins has just sent a long list of his auctions, which he says must go in to-morrow; and Kidd’s clerk has left eight or ten good book ads., so I shall be able to make out a full page without using the quacks. *
* It is necessary to remark here, by way of explanation,
that there are gradations of rank and respectability in
advertisements; and that a high aristocratical feeling
pervades their location in a well regulated paper. The
quack ads., alluded to by Mr. Pica, are those benevolent
offers of aid to the afflicted, which announce that
“rheumatism and lumbago are effectually relieved by a new
process;” that the most excruciating toothache is allayed in
one minute by an unrivalled anodyne cement; that “gout is
cured without medicine, in a few hours,” and “blotched faces
in no time at all;” that red whiskers are changed in a
single night to beautiful shades of brown or black;” that
“the healthy functions of the stomach and intestinal canal,
are restored by an improved domestic instrument,” &c. &c.
These are never allowed to show their faces in the genteel
company of the other advertisements, unless there happens to
be a lack of gentility, but herd together in what is
technically called the, “back page” of the paper.