The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-11-28
For THE ARRANeAw TRAvELER.
 EDITORS I KNOW OF.
BY HAL BERTE.

The average English local paper is generally tame, uninteres,ing sheet, restricted in original matter to dry re- ports of police court cases, varied now and again by personal paragraphs rela- tive to the doings of some great resident nobody. Beyond this and goodly ar ray of advertisements, it very seldom ven- lures. When there is lack of news the columns are padded with "wit and hu- mor," or, in other words, the appropriated jokes of transatlantic papers which are of course not credited. If you should by any chance happen to walk into the edi- tors room you would probably find the floor strewn with multilated copies of THE ARKANsAw TRAvELER, Detroit Free Press, or other American journals of repute. You would thus be enabled to see how hard the poor man works with his scissors and paste. Very often he takes the credit of these funny things to himself. He forgets whence they came and lets his readers run away with the idea that he is the funniest man in creation. And yet he has never written funny thing in his life, and couldn't to save his life.
 Far be 1t from me to say that there is not one funny man in the crowd. To as- sert that would be gross libel on one or two editors down our way.
 Firstly, theye is the editor of the TrHmbet. He has one great joke. Whenever any one steals chicken he heads the report: "A Foul Proceed, ing" Who can dispute the point of this joke? A stranger taking up the paper for the first time would say, "This editor is wit" But he might change his mind when he was told that our editorial genius has run the same joke in the 7yHmfef for the last forty years.
 Then there is the editor of the Bayo- mefer. If you send him a contribution and he declines it as not being up to his standard of merit, you may safely send it to journal of repate and be pretty cer- tain that it will be accepted. Then the Ba,0mefe~ man will likely as not forget it was ever sent to him, and pirate it in a most barefaced way, emitting both your name and the name of the journal in which it appeared-the funny dog.
 Another humoiist is the editor of the HfageAog. This genius alters every- thing you send to suit his own taste. Poetry or prose it is all the same to him. l remember once sending him by way of a practical joke those we'll known lines by Robert Burns:
 The gloomy night is gath ring fast,
 Loud roars the wild inconstant blast.
 He altered them. They appeared in the Hfagehog thus:
 The shades of night are falling fast,
 And loudly roars the bowling wind.
 In the answers to correspondents "the editor said: "We don't like the first line bit and have altered it to words more easily understood. As it was origi- nally, all was vague. For instance you do not say 1hat the night is gathering. In second line you use the word incon- stant. The inconstancy of lovers is pro- verbal but when it comes to a blast we fail to see any consistency in the term. Moreover, blast is a low word being blasphemous, obscene and vulgar. We wish you would be more select in your choice of words"
 There is yet another editor on my mind. He edits the How.ey and is crank on misquotations. At the time Longfellew died, wrote some original verses "In Memoriam and sent them to his paper. By way of preface I quoted the lamented poets own lines:
 Life is real, life is earnest,
 And the grave is not its goal, etc.
 Instead of" iks goal" however, l inad- vertantly wrote "Me goal "not by any means grave error, one would think. However in next weeks HoaUl<r the verses appeared with a nete annexed to this effect: "We wish our conespon- dents would quote correctly; anent the Longfellow verses printed to-day the wri- ter grossly misquoted, and we had to alter it." Of course I felt rather cha grined, and took and looked the thing over to see if there were any more errata. Judge of my surprise when found he had | got rdaL inxtead af noal-M And 4ka