A newspaper
office seems to attract every conceivable sort of person, to the prejudice of
discipline. Zenana-mission ladies arrive, and beg that the Editor will
instantly abandon all his duties to describe a Christian prize-giving in a
back slum of a perfectly inaccessible village; Colonels who have been
overpassed for command sit down and sketch the outline of a series of ten,
twelve, or twenty- four leading articles on Seniority versus Selection;
missionaries wish to know why they have not been permitted to escape from
their regular vehicles of abuse, and swear at a brother missionary under
special patronage of the editorial We. Stranded theatrical companies troop up
to explain that they cannot pay for their advertisements, but on their return
from New Zealand or Tahiti will do so with interest; inventors of patent
punka-pulling machines, carriage couplings, and unbreakable swords and
axletrees call with specifications in their pockets and hours at their
disposal; tea companies enter and elaborate their prospectuses with the office
pens; secretaries of ball committees clamour to have the glories of their last
dance more fully described; strange ladies rustle in and say, "I want a
hundred lady's cards printed at once, please," which is manifestly part of an
Editor's duty; and every dissolute ruffian that ever tramped the Grand Trunk
Road makes it his business to ask for employment as a proof-reader.
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