ARE YOU THE EDITOR ?

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2238, 30 April 1881, Page 3

ARE YOU THE EDITOR ?

When a Western editor was sitting in his office one day, a man whose brow was clothed with thunder entered. Fiercely seizing a chair, he slammed his hat on the table, hurled his umbrella on the floor, and sat down. “ Are tou the editor?” he asked. “ Yes.” “ Can yon read writing ?” “ Of course.” “ Bead that then,” ho said, thrusting at the colonel an envelope, with an inscription upon it. “ B ,” said the colonel, trying to spell it. “ That’s not a B. It’s an S,” said the man. “8 ; oh yes ; I see. Well it looks like 4 Salt for dinner,’ or 4 Souls of sinners,’ said the colonel. “80, sir,” replied the man, “nothing of the kind. That’s my name —Samuel H. Brunner. I knew yon couldn’t read. I called to see you about that poem of mine you printed the other day, on the 4 Surcease of Sorrow.’ ” “ I don't remember it,” said the colonel. “ Of course yon don’t, because it went into the paper under the infamous title of ‘ Smearcase To-morrow.’ ” “A blunder of the compositor’s, I suppose.” “ Yes, sir, and that’s what I want to see you about. The way in which that poem was mutilated was simply scandalous. I haven’t slept a nignt since. It exposed me to derision. People think that I am an ass. Let me show you. The first line when 1 wrote it read in this way : 4 Lying by a weeping willow, underneath a gentle slope.’ That is beautiful, poetic, affecting. Now, how did your vile sheet present it to the public ? 4 Lying to a weeping widow, to induce her to elope,’ • Weeping widow, mind you. A widow. Oh, thunder and lightning. This is too much! “But look a-here at the fourth verse. That’s worse yet. 4 Oast thy pearls before the swine, and lose them in the dirt.’ He sets it up in this fashion—- ‘ Cart thy pills before the sunrise, and lose them if they hurt,’ Now isn’t that a cold-blooded outrage on a man’s feelings ? I’ll leave it to you if it isn’t.” “ It’s hard, that’s a fact,” said the colonel. “ And then take the fifth verse. In the original manuscript, it said, plain as daylight— ‘ Take away the jingling money; it is only glittering dross.’ “In its printed form you made me say: * Take away the tingling honey; put some flies in for the boss.’ By G-eorge, I felt like braining yon with a fire-shovel. I was never so cut up in my life. There, for instance, was the sixth verse. I wrote: ‘ 1 am weary of the tossing of the ocean as it heaves.’ It is a lovely lino’, too. But imagine my horror and the anguish of my family when I opened your paper and saw the line transformed into: 1 1 am wearing out my trousers till they’re open at the knees.’ | That is a little too much. That seems to me ' like carrying the thing an inch or two too far. I think I have a constitutional right to murder that compositor ; don’t yon ?” “ I think you have.” “ Let me read you one more verse, I > wrote—- * I swell the flying echoes as they roam among the hills. And I feel my soul awakening to the I ecstasy that thrills. Now, what do you s’poseyour miserable > outcast turned that into ? Why, into this—--4 I smell the frying shoes ns they coast along 1 the bulls.’ ' And I peel my sole mistaken in the erotary that whirls.’ > I must slay that man. Where is he ? ’ “He is out just now,” said the colonel. “ Come in to-morrow.”