Daily Yellowstone journal., 1886-11-11
THE FUNNY MANS TASK.
The Reason why Many Writers Becoms
Worked Out-Brain and Stomach.

The Reason why Many Writers Bscome
Worked Out-Brsin and Stomach.
Not many moths ago a certain Boston
newspaper was quoted from one end of
the country 10 the other. Its humorous
lyrics gave it great reputation sud
denly, and the paper, hitherto unheard
of, went up like rocket. At the pres
ent time, however, we seldom find the
paper quoted; its verses are popular no
longer-t rocket has fallen a stick.
The experience which the Boston paper
has had does not differ from the expert
ence which many other American papers
have had during the last ten years. The
craze for humorous writing has possessed
many newspaper which led glorious
career for few weeks and then sank
into obscurity. The trouble with the
Boston humorous poet seems to have
been that he worked himself out, and
this, we will add, seems to have been
the trouble with most of the newspaper
humorists who have fiourished and
waned within the last decade.
There is no harder task in the world
than that of attempting the same class
of work for protracted period, and in
the literary profession the hardest kind
of work one can be called upon to sus-
tain is humor. We have frequently re-
marked that no man can sustain any
kind of literary work unless he mean
while constantly improves and replen-
ishes his mind; he must read, study,
converse, see, travel-in short, he must
be feeding his intellectuals all the time
upon variety of food. or his intellect
uals will surely be exhausted before his
ambition has been satisfied. The great
mistakes of young writers are two. The
first is in supposing that the mind ID
self-feeding machine that is capable OF
producing indefinitely and requiring nc
special attention at the hands of the
proprietors; the second is in supposing
that the mind is capable of answering
at once the demands of occasion, nc
matter how enormous those demands
may be.
The brain and the stomach are twins
and they demand similar treatment
The stomach demands regular refresh
ment and regular rest and SO does th'
brain. If the stomach doesn't get whai
it demands it makes serious trouble, bu
this trouble is mere nothing compared
with the worry, the vexation and the
disappointment that an impoverished
and abused brain will cause a man. i
would be fair, we think. to estimate thal
about 80 per cent. of the newspaper
writers in this country neglect theil
brains; in this estimate we do not, o.
course, include the large number whost
possession of brains is simply an allega'
ton. The humorists, so-called, make {
still sorrier showing. We will ventur,
to say that 95 per cent. Of their number
have petered out merely because the,
have failed to recognize the great trutl
that the intellectual machine must b,
kept in running order or it will mo-
run.
A writer should never play out; b
should do good work up to the years o
senility, and senility should not come
him any earlier than II comes TO tn
blacksmith, the merchant. or the farmer
But just a. the blacksmith, the msrchan
and the farmer succeed in their voca
tions by exercising prudence and enter
prise, 20 must the writer be willing Il
work out his ends. He must be "layinl
in" stock, or his supply viii quickly b
exhausted. He must study an
and progress with the world. for tn
world is studying and progressing, an
he who thinks not makes in that jude
ment fatal mistake. Chicago News.