ON EDITORS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 5765, 20 September 1879, Page 3

ON EDITORS.

Some of our best managing editors have started life at the “ case,” while others equally as good never held a “stick” in their hand. But with few exeeptions, whether the editor has dropped into his position from the_ “ case” in the composing-room, or tumbled into the business, as it were, by accident or choice, ho must be a man of quick perception, ready to lift the pen and grapple with his subject at a moment's notice. Nearly ail the editors are first-class reporters ; that is, they can give tbe substance of a speaker in language terse and brief, and give in a single paragraph what the speaker has failed to do in an hour’s declamation. Thus it is that all editors are excellent correspondents. They study to bo as concise as possible, write to be understood, and no more words are used iu the sentence than is necessary. To be an editor now one must be as versatile as a dancing-master, and able to write not as conscience dictates, but as he is instructed. The life of an editor is, therefore, all things considered, one that is seldom taken up by choice ; the man drops into the editorial chair by accident more than design, and once in it he loses all moral courage to get out of it to engage in a mercantile pursuit in which there is not only a possibility but a probability of obtaining an independent competence before the setting in of old ago. That is never obtained sitting in the editorial chair, when employed to do the literary drudgery of a paper. Tbe every-day editor makes a living and little more. He can often do much for his friends, but for himself he can do nothing.— Exchange.