The weekly sentinel. [volume] (Winston-Salem, N.C.) 1886-1887, 1886-05-06

Workers having more or less to do wit
! types. commcmorated the birthday @
! Benjamin Franklin by Il dinner at Del
] monico's. which was enjoyed by owe
! 200 guests.
/ Mark Twain was there. and his tex
was. The Compositor." This is wha
! he said:
The Chairman's historical remin
| isccnces of Gutenberg have caused M,
20 fall into reminisor- n,es, for | mysel
am something of an antiquity. laugh.
ter All things change in the process
sion of years. and it may be that l an
among strangers 1t may be that the
printer of to-day lie not tho printer Of
thirty-five Years ago. was no stranger
to him. knew him WELL l built his
fIre for him In the winter mornings;
brought his water from the village
pump; l swept out his office; 1 picked
up his type from under his stand; and.
if he was there to see, l put the good
type in his case and the broken ones
among the hell natter and if he
wasn't there to see dumped it all with
the 'pi' on the imposing stone-for that
was the furtive fashion Of the cub, and
was cub. l wetted down the paper
Saturdays. turned it Sundays-for this
was country weekly; l rolled. [
washed the rollers. washed the forms.
L folded the papers, l carried them
around at dawn Thursday mornings. 1
enveloped the papers that were for the
mail-we had a hundred town SUBJ
scribers and $50 country ones: the town
subscribers paid in groceries and the
country ones in cabbagcs and cordwood
when they paid at all, which was
merely sometimes, and then we ALWAYS
stated the fact in the paper, and gave
them puff; and if we forgot it they
stopped the paper. Every man on the
town list helped edit the thing-that is,
he gave orders as to how it was to be
edited; dictated it's opinions, marked
out its course for it, and every time the
boss failed to connect he stopped his
paper. We We're just infested with
critics, and we tried to satisfy them all
over. We had one subscriber who paid
cash, and he was more trouble to us
than all the rest. He bought us, once a
year. body and soul, for 81.
He used to modify our politics every
which way. and he made us change our
religion four times in five years. If we
ever tried to reason with him he would
threaten to stop his paper, and, of
course. that meant bankruptcy and de-
struction. That man used to write art
cles a column and half long, loaded
ong primer, and sign them 'Junius,' or
Veritas,' or 'Fox Populi, or some other
rot; and then, after it
vas set up, he would come in and say
he had changed his mind-whieh was a
yllded figure of speech, because he
hadn't any-and order it to be left out.
Ne couldn't stand such Il waste as that;
We couldn't afford bogus in that office;
o we always took the leads out, altered
he signature. credited the article to the
lval paper in the next village, and put
in. Well, we did have one or two
,inds of bogus Whenever there was
barbecue, or circus, or a baptizing,
we knocked off for half a day; and
hen to make up for short matter we
would turn ads'-turn over the whole
page and duplicate it The other bogus
vas deep philosophical stuff, which we
judged nobody over read, SO we kept q
galley of it standing and kept on slap
'ing the same old patches Of it in, every |
low and then, till it got dangerous. Al |
o, IN the early days of the telegraph we |
lsed to economic on the news. We |
picked out the items that were pointless
md barren of information and stood |
N galley, and changed the dates and
ocalltles and used them over and over
gain till the public interest in them
vas worn to the bone. We marked the
DIS, but we seldom paid any attention
. the marks afterward; so the life of a
td' ad and a If ad was equally eternal
have seen a It'd notice of Sheriff's
ale still booming serenely along two
ears after the sale was over, the Sheriff
cad. and the whole circumstances be-
ONE ancient history. Most of the
early ads were patent-medicine stereo-
7pes, and we used to fence with them.
life was easy with us; if we pied form
e suspended till next week, and we al
avs suspended every now and then
hen the fishing was good, and explain
it by the illness of the editor-a pal
y excuse, because that kind of paper
as just as well off with sick editor as
well one, and better off with = dead
ne than with either of them lie was
Ill of blessed egotism and placid self
nportance, but he didn't know as
uch as a three-em quad. He never
t any type except in the rush of the
st day. and then he would smouch all
g poetry and leave tho rest to ..ieff''
I the solid takes. He wrote with i'm
'essive f1atulence and soaring conf,
nee upon the yastest subjects; but
lffing aims gifts 4, of. wedding-cake,
lty ice-cream, abnormal watermelons,
I'd sweet potatoes the size of your leg
rs his best hold. He was ALWAYS q
et- kind of poet of the Carriers
1dress breed-and whenever his intel
It suppurated and he read the result
the printers and asked for their opin-
a they were very frank, and straight
ward. about it. l. They generally
raped their rules on the boxes all the ]
ne he was reading, and called it ..hog
lsh' when he got through. All this
IS thirty-five years ago, when the man
10 could set 700 an hour could put on |.
It as many airs as he wanted to; and