Evening capital. (Annapolis, Md.) 1884-1910, 1886-10-18
ANNAPOLIS. Md MONDAY EVENING. OCTOBER 49, 1885,
THE FuNNY MANS TASK.

The Reason why Many writers Become
Worked Out-Brain and stomach.
Not many moths ago certain Boston
newspaper was quoted from one end of
the country to the other. It's humorous
lyrics gave it a 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 q 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 aglorious
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 is
a self-feeding machine that is capable of
producing indefinitely and requiring no
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, no
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 the
brain. If the stomach doesn't get what
it demands it makes serious trouble, but
this trouble is mere nothing compared
with the worry, the vexation and the
disappointment that an impoverished
and abused brain will cause man. 1t
would be fair, we think. to estimate that
about 90 per cent of the newspaper
writers in this country neglect their
brains; in this estimate we do not, of
course, include the large number whose
possession of brains is simply an allega-
ton. The humorists, so-called, make a
still sorrier showing. We will venture
to say that 95 per cent. of their number
have petered out merely because they
have failed to recognize the great truth
that the intellectual machine must be
kept in running order or it will not
run.
A writer should never play out; he
should do good work up to the years of
senility, and senility should not come to
him any earlier than it comes to the
blacksmith, the merchant, or the farmer.
But just as the blacksmith, the merchant
and the farmer succeed in their voca-
tions by exercising prudence and enter
prise, so must the writer be willing to
work out his ends. He must be laying
in" stock, or his supply will quickly be
exhausted. He must study and
and progress with the world, for the
world is studying and progressing, and
he who thinks not makes in that judg-
ment fatal mistake. Chicago News.