, 1880-08-30
Remarkable Journalistic Feats.

Every Journalist Of any ability recol-
lects feats which he has accom- pl1shed.
which it does not seem to him he could
ever do again-long reaches of persist
ent labor which stretched through all
the daylight and we're persisted in after
the evening gas was lighted, long after
admonitions came to him that the press
was waiting. and that the forms must
be closed up Immediately. Sometimes,
by the evening fireside, sit and dream
af the great things which once did,
not in any spirit of self-sn iciency. but
in my own humble way, as Swift
dreamed while the intellectual! shadows
were closing around him. What a
genius had when I wrote that book
he used to say of the "Tale of Tub. "
Well, even little men. who have done
fheir best. may look back upon their
triumphs. l do, for one, and | should
not be very civil to whomsoever should
galnsay me. remember how once a
great statesman died, and the wires
sent us the melancholy intelligence at
about three O'Clock in the afternoon.
| should like to know what most people
capable of doing it at all would have
said if they had been called upon for q
biography of that statesman. covering
the whole period of his life, all his po-
litical history. with decent estimate
of what he had dope, and of his talents
and character-all this to fill some six
columns of the Tribune, and all to be
ready within nine hours! I we'll re-
member that "Obituary," and how
some people criticised it, and found
faults and errors in it, and how few un-
derstood the diff .u!ties of the work, or
thought of the tagged and weary man
who had done his best, and had not
done it badly. Bless the breakfast
table critics! how sharp they were and
how knowing Bless also the sagacious
gentleman who had month in which
to conslier the matter, to turn it over
lelsurely, to ransack the chambers of
memory, and to take down book after
bo' from the library shelves! He
would have finished it all charmingly
IN the day time, but not qnite so we'll
at two clock in the morning, with the
night editor at his elbow and the night
foreman bowling through the speaking
tube.
The public Is not inropsilerate-iti is
only ignorant. The newspaper is a
mystery of the manufacture of which
1t knows hardly anything. Those who
give to it the enthusiasm of youth, the
vigor of manhood, and whatever wis
dom old age may have brough: with it,
might have won an abiding fame j
this department of literature or the
other, in the fields of science, in the
arena of public affairs. Taste or acci-
dent has betrayed them into humble
sphere of human eXertion, nor do they
quarrel with their fortune. He who
drifts into journalism rarely leaves it
be still plods on in the daily toll
which for him has IA rare fascination.
Often there is no fame for him. The
cleverest newspaper man may be utterly
unknown, and not forgotten only be-
cause he has never been remembered.
His heart, however, is sto1ta at any rate;
and come competency or the lack of it.
come the highssu ~r the humblest posi-
lion, he still tolls with irrepressible |
and hopes when all s |
over that his associates who survive him |
will be reasonably sorry or solemn 1T |
his funeral CHARLES L CoNGDoN.