Saint Mary's beacon. [volume] (Leonard Town, Md.) 1867-1983, 1875-01-07


frequently wrote in single day four or
FIVE, even six, columns of the Journal /;
and then he would not write another
line for week. Generally, however,
he had performing periods extending
from one to three months; after which
he would eschew manuscript complete
ly until the toilsome fit returned" This
statement implies misconception, foun-
ded, no doubt, we ought to add in fair
ness to the author, on a very natural
misinterpretation of facts. Prentice, in
the later years of his life, was not uni
formly industrious, simply because he
was not uniformly sober; but whenever
he was sober he was Industrious with
out intermission, whether the period of
his sobriety lasted n month or a year,
and, what is more remarkable, the Pc
riod of his inactivity always sharply
conceded with that of his inebriety, ex-
tending not an hour beyond the latter,
no matter how long this extended. AS
soon as his appetite for liquor was sa-
tiated and he became sober he went to
work as if nothing had happened,
though he might not have drawn So
ber breath for months. The process
known as "tapering off, was unknown
to him. You might see Prentice at
midnight, after an uninterrupted de-
bauch of many weeks, staggering along
the street or sleeping with his head on
his arms in a saloon, and the next morn
ing, if you called ut his Office, you mig hit
find him seated snugly in his old cush-
ioned chair, debating articles and para
graphs with that subdued eagerness and
mufiled vigor which proclaimed him en-
tirely himself, and apparently altogeth-
er oblivious of his late obliviousness.-
The spring Of his elastic constitution
was all but instantaneous. His facul-
ties rose from the darkness and torpor
of intoxication with the suddenness of
an equatorial sunrise. Perfect day
qsickly followed perfect night. There
was no twilight. The truth is, PREM
tice was emphatically a worker. His
genius was working one. Work in
spired him. He rejoiced in it, and, to
return quite to our point, never inter-
mitted it, except when very sick or in a
state that the writer Of the Harper
sketch would call 'temulent" He knew
absolutely nothing of the reaction into
which this writer supposes Lin to have
lapsed habitually after ''the toilsome
fit" Work was so natural, and de-
hghtful, and necessary to Prentice, that
no excess of it ever exhausted him. To
him work, indeed, was not toilsome but
playsome. 1t was his highest pleasure
"His style." continues the writer in
Harper, ''was fluent and mainly correct
but often verbose and exuberent, from
the native tendency of the West and
South to the tumid rhetoric, prone to
be mistaken there for elegance and elo-
quence." This is damning with faint
praise; but Prentice, whatever his faults
as a man, should not be damned as a
writer, directly or indirectly. Besides
the depreciation seems to us not dis
criminative. His style, we should say,
was pointed rather than .'auent," and
In addition to having been not "main.
ly' but wholly correct" was never
VERBOSE" though sometimes perhaps
''exuberan." in the sense of richness
but not surely from the native ten.
dency of the West and South to tumid
rhetoric" since Prentice was not a M.
tive of either section, and, moreover
had formed his style before he crossed
Mason and Dixon's Line. The English
of Prentice, in our opinion, was as pur,
as that of Cobbett or Greeley. with a
variety and brightness to which neither
of those writers could lay claim.
So much we think it but fit to say IL
justice to dead journalist who fairly
after all is said against him that can b,
said, must be acknowledged to hav,
been a shining light in our profession
and whose genius, if We may hazard tn,
opinion, would have stood higher III tn,
estimation of his survivors had h,
poured out its products witha a hand less
lavish. Abundance sometimes cheaper.
in the halls of fame as in the marts O
trade.