Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1882-09-19
HE EXPLAINED.

Scc HOW tuoy Tuu weekly down IN
South Carolina, and little darby
piloted me up one street and down an
other until we halted before stairway
over which hung sign of "The Her.
AID" The office was up four flights of
stairs, of course, and had only reached
the landing of the first when hunk of
composition cut from some old roller
whizzed past my head. There was
nothing strange in that, however, as all
well-regulated offices keep half dozen
OF these hunks lying around as weapons
OF defense. and I pressed on. At the
head of the second fight I looked up
and thought saw man with gun in
his hands. All weekly newspapers hav-
ing any influence always keep at least
one shotgun lying around to intimidate
poets, and so went whistling along up
the third fight. Then I was certain
that saw man, and certain that the
muzzle was looking down upon me.
Some editors stand at the head of tile
fourth fight and practice at target
shooting to rest their weary brains, and
l was wondering where the bulls eye
was when I heard click ! click and
voice called out:
Stand /! or you are dead man 7"
No man who thinks anything of his
clothes will ever be found dead on a
stairway leading to printing Office. I
came to halt, and the voice continued:
Throw up your hands and go down
stairs, or I'll blow your brains into the
streetp
didn't believe he would, but as I
couldn't prove it the best way was to
obey his little request. I had just got
back to the hotel when in came the ed
itor, the foreman and the devil and two
comps, and they all began to talk at
once. They were expecting lightning
sort of politician up those stairs at that
very time, and if he once got up he was
to open fire from revolver and have a
scalp dance over the remains of thu Her.
aid. 1t was mistake, and they were
deeply grieved, and we had lemonade
together, and the man with gun shook
hands again and whispered:
"Boy! 7 had my finger on the trig-
ger and dead aim on your head, and if
you had lifted one foot an inch high to
come further up I'd have killed you as
dead as hammer p
After that I always sentfour boys, one
after another, up stairs with my card and
written declaration that T was not
loaded.-M. quad.
THE M4GAZINE WRITER'S .GRIE
ANCES.
Ihe magazine writer's are on the verge
of a strike. Their grievance is that edi-
tors won't leave their manuscripts alone.
This is one of the paradoxes of litera-
ture, it may be remarked. A writer OBJ
ject when the editors leave his MSS.
so severely alone that they cannot get
into print because the editor does not
favor them with sufficient inattention.
Really, however, the magazinists are
not so unreasonable as they appear at
first sight. In business terms they OBJ
ject to being treated upon that principle
which led Mark Lemon to blue-pencil
out of the rich mans Punch the most
powerful clause in Tom Hoods arraign-
ment of the rich mans selfshness in his
Song of the Shirt"
The trouble with the magazine itera-
teurs is that it has become fashion to-
dress all manuscripts which find favor
in those periodicals with an editorial
scalpel. They claim that it is almost
impossible to get an article printed as
it is written. Not only that, but that the
articles are persistently emasculated by
hands incompetent to touch without de-
stroying them, and that no article will
be accepted by magazine unless this
privilege be accorded the purchaser.
This fact may account for the puer-
lity of SO much Of the magazine litera-
ture of the present. It is a generally
conceded fact that magazine editor,
male or female, is only eligible for that
position when he or she is unfit for any
other walk in literary life. It can be
understood, therefore, how the works of
people competent to write must suffer
from their critical Offices; how their
feeble hands must revel in the task of
dissecting the backbone out of subject
and reducing it to their own vapid level.
There is small choice of redress or
defense that we can see for the victim of
the magazine editor. He must either
become so great that no one dare mutt
late his work, or give up writing for the
magazines. In the former instance he
would doubtless give up writing for
them anyhow, SO the selection narrows