Weekly Trinity journal., 1857-06-20
The Slave of the Quill.

Did any one except member of the editorial
fraternity ever take into consideration the duties
of a daily editor? His life is one OF continual
toll and his position of the most difficult upon
earth. He is always upon the rack of thought,
because he must find something new and original
with which to entertain his readers he must be
posted up in all the public questions of the day !;
he mast know--we had almost said, everything.
A lawyer may understand the lava physician
medicine, q mechanic his trade, merchant debts
and credits, prices trcights, notes and exchanges
and all laborers in almost all the avocations of
life may understand the matters and things per-
tanning to those particular avocations, and need
to know scarcely anything more. But ii is indis-
pensible that an editor, who does justice TO his
profession, should have a vast fund of general
information, for there is not subject which en-
cages mems minds in whatever range of science
or literature, upon which he is not pcremptorily
called to write. If new question arises, OF
great moment, in the community, of which he
knows nothing, he must search into the dust and
cobwebs of the libraries for the truths hid away
in the ponderous tones that no one else would
read, and MAKE himself competent to treat of it
as he should He must stand ready with his facts
and figures and know how to apply them at II
moments warning. He must drink deep of the
Pieran spring for he is expected by his insatiate
readers to know how to weave IL poetic garland
in the lowery fields of fancy MS well as to hcw
out solid truths from the cumbrous mountains of
statistics. In short, he is expected to furnish
matter Of interest 10 all classes OF readers and to
every conceivable variety of tastes, and must. in
II greater or less degree, do it. Aud the worst of
it is, is an every day business. There is moth
ing new under the sun, says Solomon, but the
daily editor is bound, at the risk Of his life and
of premature old age, to give that proposition of
the great prototype Of Martin Farquar Tupper,
duly as the day comes, -diurnal lie. Nothing
short will satisfy his readers or himself.
We are speaking now of an editor who rs one
in the true sense of the word and not of those
apologies for editors who pass off articles lead
ing ones and all, from other papers as their own
with simple acknowledgement OF says the New
York Herald or Tribune or whatever paper il
NAV be- stuck in the middle of the column, so
that The general reader labors under the impress
sion that the whole article, with the exception of
the part where The says occurs is original with
the paper in which it appears. Some papers are
entirely made up in this way, and their conduc-
tors are u disgrace to the profession.
In view Of the mborious aud generally thank
less nature of this avocation. we wonder if it
would not be we'll for the more ctelligent public
to be q little more lenicnt towards really indus
trous editors than they area little less ready
to overlook what is mert0rous in their perform
anccs aud to carp at those faults and short com
ngs which are frequently the result of the ncces-
sarly hurried writing which the business requires.
Dee