MISERIES OF A PROVINCIAL EDITOR.

Evening Star, Issue 3126, 25 February 1873, Page 2

MISERIES OF A PROVINCIAL EDITOR.

“Snyder,” in the Weekly Herald, says : I shall never cease to regret, so long as 1 live and continue to be an insignificant unit in this sublunary sphere, the time, when, some years a.io, I turned from a useful and respectable occupation and became a writer for newspapers. I was pursuing the peaceful calling of abrickraaker, at which learned a humble and contented livelihood, when in a weak moment I refused to listen to the voice of reason, and I became a new paper editor. It was in a small Province ot the Midfile Island, where I chanced to learn that the newspaper of its chief town, long and ably conducted by a respectable proprietor, had been bought up by thirteen pumppoliticians, who were dissatisfied with him because his editor would not advocate a me. • sure by which this baker’s dozen should alienate to themselves the whole of the lands in the Province, to be bought at five and threepence per acre upon deferred payments. These men bought up the paper and then advertised for an editor, I applied. I was asked what qualifications I possessed, I told the whole truth I said that in my youth I had run for three different newspapers upon commission on the sale of them. Thatl bad on another occasion been engaged to sweep out a newspaper office, and carry up editors’ and reporters’ “copy” to the printers ; and that possessing a quarter of an acre of clay upon lease, 1 had turned to brickmaking. I was asked what were my politics, and J said, just as I made my bricks to order so would I make my politic s to suit them. 1 was deemed admirably fitted for the duties of a newspaper editor, and received an engagement forthwith at about half the rate of wages of a journeyman blacksmith. I commenced and continued to edit the new proprietary paper for nearly twelve months; and, though I say it who shouldn’t say it, i am of opinion that no other nan could have stood it out as I did. A week after my engagement, and when I bad burnt my last id in of bricks, I took possession of the editorial chair. When I had written my first leader for the following morning’s issue, eight of the proprietors came down to read it before it went into type. Three approved of the sentiments expressed ; four dissented, and the eighth didn’t see that it had any seU'G it. Within a fortnight, live shareholders, two of whom could not spell at all, and three very little, brought me each a leader to insert in the paper. Two of those in substance were advertisements calculated to benefit the writer’s business. Two were controversial on matters of religious faith, and one recommended a petition to be drawn up to send to the English Parliament praying that the Province should be placed under its control, and asking the Queen to appoint one of her sops as a resident minister. I could not convince these shareholders that such writing was not the material of which leading articles were composed, any more than they could have convinced me that bricks could have been made from soft soap. Every one of them insisted that his leader must go iu. After battling over the matter for nearly five hours, and nine quarts of beer, it was agreed at my suggestion that the leaders should bo inserted as letters addressed to the editor. And in this form they appeared by shutting out seven columns of good paying advertisements. These five haler-writers were ever after mine enemies, who finally compassed my downfall. One morning a shareholder brought me what he termed a splendid local article. Me said it would make the paper go down like wildfire arid winkey. It would be read by every one all through the Colonies. Having run my eye over it, I quite concurred with the writer that it would make the paper go down—so much down, that it was never likely to come up again ; and 1 was also quite certain that the local would be read by every one ; for I think it was one of the most splendid and most magnificent libels I ever read iu my life The article, without the slightest circumlocution, stated that hereditary wilful murder ran in the family of a man who lived next house but one to him, and whose wife had quarrelled with his wife. I told the writer that it would never do. That it was libellous, and that all the'shareholders would be answerable for the consequences of publishing it. He replied by saying that he didn’t want them to be responsible—that ho would bp’responsible for the consenuenors himself. Put as po Jury would have returned damages at the lowest figure under LIOO.OOO, and the individual’s wealih merely consisted of a horse, a dray, and a stack of firewood, I took the grave responsibility, upon myself of refusing to hand it into the printers, by which I made one more enemy. I have only mentioned two or three of the difficulties I had to fight against in the matter of inserting or rejecting the writing of shareholders. These were but trifles iu comparison to other things I had to endure. One shareholder after another would come and carry away my newspaper exchanges, so that I had nothing to select my reprint matter from.:. Another insisted that it was part of my duty to write a poem in commemoration of the binja of his'first-bom buby Another considered I did wrong iu always fitting to tto first, as J efcoild

keep it back until the stale news had been used up. One shareholder wanted me to publish two columns of the novel “ Monto Christo ”in each issue of the p’per. This man was a little reasonable, for upon showing him my figures, that at the rate of two columns an issue in a twice a-week paper, the whole of the work would take 84 years, fix months, and three weeks, before it was finished, he expressed himself satisfied that it should not ho commenced until we brought out twice a day a paper a trifle bigger than the London Times. Before i could draw my salary, the cheque had to b« signed by three of the shareholders, and as these three happened to be among the vcy men whose editorials I had objected to have printed, I had a great amount of anxiety and trouble.before 1 could obtain their signatures. And even when this was accomplished, the cheque was generally handed back to me by the bank cashier, with the words “not sufficient funds” initialed on the back.

During the eleven months and three days I remained on this paper, the agonies 1 endured were and will ever be unspeakable. My misery was greater than I could bear, I carefully reviewed all the sins of my past life ; but I felt that 1 had done nothing deserving of such a terrible retribution. I observed that my wife pursued a strange, and, for her, a very extraordinary and unusual line of behaviour towards me. When at home, she would never leave the room I happened to be sitting or resting in. She frequently visited my editorial office where the newspaper was "written. There was a solicitude evinced towards me which I never before believed she was capable of. Two years after she divulged her secret. She had feared, she told me, through every hour of the day and night, that I intended to commit suicide, and it was her duty, she considered, to exercise all her watchfulness in preventing me from perpetrating such a rash act, although she was bound to confess, she said, that 1 would have been perfectly justified in making away with myself, and that heaven would scarcely have been sufficient compensation for the sufferings I had endured on earth. I endeavoured once more to obtain employment at my old trade of brick-making, but found I had completely unfitted myself for continuous and honest work. I would deliver eight hundred bricks and charge them as a thousand. I scorched them outside to make them look thoroughly baked through when the inside was only wet cla . 1 mixed gravel with the composite, and did all sorts of moan things. The editor business had utterly demoralised me, and I felt that if I was to live I must seek employment on some newspaper. I found ‘my way to the capita! of the "’outhern Province during the gold rush of 1861, and became a co respondent for; even different newspapers, three of them Victorian, and four of them published in the North Island. Editors and newspaper proprietors in those days (of course th< y never do so now) furnished instructions to correspondents, who were expected to write to suit the par.icular views of the newspaper they corresponded for. For Victoria I was to write in a way which would stop the ru.-h then setting in furiously from that Colony to this. Ofcourse, Victoria did not want to lose its population. So, while rich fields in the Otago district were being worked, and thousands of ounces of gold were being weekly obtained, the newsp iper correspondent was made to say that it was a duffing rush, and that very shortly men would be returning in droves as thick as fleas in a Maori banket. The four newspapers I corresponded for in this Colony held opposite views in politics. By one I was ordered to speak in favor of Provincial institutions. By another, in favor of centralism. By a third 1 was told to compare favorably the Province I wrote for as compared with the Province I lived in. A fourth asked for the very opposite view. My ideas by my various opposing advocacies at length got so onfused that 3 made most extraordinary mistakes, and to this day I am not quite certain what my views on Colonial politics are. Sometimes I think I am a centralist, and at others I think lam not. If a policy could be established embracing the two, I think 1 phould be that policy, and advocate it with consummate ability. I have now become steeped in demoralisation. I only hope my confession will have a chastening and purifying effect. I cope so—l trust so.