Side Lights Part 7

XXIII.

SORROW.

I have never been disposed to be n.i.g.g.ard of cheerfulness; for it has always seemed to me that one of the duties of a writer is to supply solace in a world where, amid all the beauty, so many things seem to go wrong. But, while I would fain banish cankered melancholy, sour ill-humour, cynicism, and petty complaining, I have never sought to disturb those who are mastered for a time by the sacred sorrow which takes possession of the greatest and purest and gentlest souls at times. There have been great men who were joyous--and they bore their part very bravely on earth; but the greatest of all have gained their strength in Sorrow's service. It matters not which of the kings amongst men we choose, we find that his kingship was only gained and kept after he had pa.s.sed through the school of grief. It is a glad world for most of us--else indeed we might wish that one cataclysm would overwhelm us all; but our masters, those who teach us and guide us, have all been under the dominion of a nameless something which we can hardly call Melancholy, but which is a kind of divine sad sister to Melancholy. There is no discontent in the sorrow of the great ones; they are not querulous, and none of them ever sought to avenge their subdued grief on the persons of their fellow-creatures. The kings bear their burden with dignity; they love to see their human kindred light of heart; but they cannot be light-hearted in turn; for the burden and mystery of the world are ever with them, and their energy is all needed to help them in conquering pettiness of soul, so that by no weak example may they dishearten those who are weak. I am almost convinced that the man who composed the inscription on the emerald which is said to have reached Tiberius must have seen the Founder of our religion--or, at least, must have known some one who had seen Him.

"None hath seen Him smile; but many have seen Him weep." It is so like what we should have expected! The days of the joyous pagan G.o.ds were pa.s.sing away, the shadows of tedium and of life-weariness were drooping over a world that was once filled with thoughtless merriment--and then came One who preached the Gospel of Sorrow. He preached that gospel, and a faithless world at first refused to hear Him; but the Divine depth of sorrow drew the highest of souls; and soon the world left the religion of pride and vainglory and pleasure to embrace the religion of Pity.

The sorrow of the weary King Ecclesiast has never seemed to me altogether n.o.ble; it is piercing in its insight--and I understand how youths who are coming to manhood find in the awful chapters a savage contrast to the joys of existence. Young men who have reached the strange time of discontent through which all of us pa.s.s are always profoundly affected by the Preacher; and they are too apt to pervert the most poignant of his words; but men who have really thought and suffered can never help feeling that there is a species of ingrat.i.tude in all his splendid lamentations. Why should the mighty king have bidden the youth to rejoice after so many awful words had been penned to show the end of all rejoicing? Every pleasure on earth the king had enjoyed, and he had drained life's chalice so far down that he tasted the bitterness of the lees. But had he not savoured joy to the full?

Was there one gift showered by the lavish bounty of G.o.d which had not fallen on the chosen of fortune? We revere the intellect of the man who chastens our souls with his sombre discourse; but I could wish he had veiled his despair, and had told us of the ravishing delights which he had known. No; the Preacher is great, but his sorrow is not the highest. I give my chief reverence to the men who let their sorrow pa.s.s into central fire that blazes into deeds; I revere the men and women who bear their yoke and utter never a word of complaint; on them sorrow falls like a pure soft snow that leaves no stain.

Of late, the nations of the world have been thrilled by the deeds of one humble man who embraced Sorrow and let her claim him for the best part of his life. I cannot bear to think much of the tragedy of Damien's life--and I shall not dream of endeavouring to find excuses, or of declaring that life an essentially happy one. The good Father chose Grief and clave to her as a bride; he chose the sights and sounds of grief as his surroundings and he wrought on silently under his fearful burden of holy sorrow until the release was given. He spoke no boastful words of contentment save when he thought of the rest that was coming for him; he gallantly accepted the crudest and foulest conditions of his dreadful environment, and he uttered no craving for sympathy, no wish for personal aid. If we think of that immortal priest's choice, we understand, perhaps for the first time, what the religion of Sorrow truly means. On the lonely rock the meek, strong soul spent its forces; joy, friendly faces, laughter of sweet children, healthy and kindly companions--there were none of these. The sea moaned round with many voices, and the sky bent over the lonely disciple; the melancholy of the sea, the melancholy of the changeless sky, the monotony of silence, must all have weighed on his heart. In the daytime there were only sights whereat strong men might swoon away--pain, pain, pain all round, and every complication of horror; but the Child of Sorrow bore all. Then came the sentence of death. For ten weary years the hero had to wait in loneliness while the Destroyer slowly enfolded him in its arms. We pity the monster who dies a swift death after his life of wickedness has been forfeited; we are vexed if a criminal endures one minute of suffering; but the n.o.ble one on that sad isle watched his doom coming for ten years, and never flinched from his task during that harrowing time. It makes the heart grow chill, despite the pride we feel in our lost brother. The religion of Sorrow has indeed conquered; and Father Damien has set the seal to its triumph.

But around us there are others who have composedly accepted sorrow as their portion. We have, it may be, felt so much joy in living, we have been so pierced through and through in every nerve and every faculty of the mind with pure rapture during our pilgrimage, that we would fain let all dwellers on earth share the blessedness that we have known. It is not to be; the gospel of pity must needs claim some of its disciples wholly--and sorrow is their portion. Perhaps under all their sadness there lurks a joy that pa.s.ses all known to slighter souls--I hope so; I hope that they cannot be permitted to endure what Dante endured. In the purlieus of our cities these resigned, resolute spirits expend their forces, and their unostentatious figures, pa.s.sing from home to home where poor men lie, offer a lesson to the petty souls of some whose riches and worldly powers are by no means petty.

Ah, it is lovely to see those merciful sisters of the fallen or falling--good to see the men who help them! Need we pity them? They would say "No"; but we must, for they live hard. A delicate lady quietly sets to work in a filthy tenement; her white hands raise up and cleanse the foulest of the poor little infants who swarm in the slums; she calmly performs menial offices for the basest and most ungrateful of the poor--and no one who has not lived among those degraded folk can tell what ingrat.i.tude is really like. Day after day that lady toils; and the only word of thanks she receives is perhaps a whine from some woman who wishes to cajole her into bestowing some gift. These sisters of Sorrow do not need thanks any more than they need pity; they frankly recognise the baseness of ill-reared human nature, and they go on trustfully in the hope that maybe things may grow slowly better. They meet death calmly; they hide their own sorrow, and even their pity is disciplined into usefulness. The men of the good company are the same. They have resigned all the lighter joys of earth, they are calm, and they let the unutterable sadness of the world spur them on only to quiet efforts after righteousness. Think what it must be for a man to leave the warm encompa.s.sment of the cheerful day and pa.s.s composedly to a gloom which is relieved only by the inner light that shines from the soul! Were not the hearts of the heroes pure, they must grow cynical as they looked on the evil ma.s.s of roguery, idleness, foulness, and cunning that seethes around them. But they have pa.s.sed the portal beyond which peace is found; and the sorrow wherewith they gaze on their hapless fellow-men is tinctured neither by scorn nor weariness. If there is no reward for them, then we all of us have cause for bitter disappointment. But the forlorn hope of goodness never trouble themselves about rewards; they face the shadows of doom only as they face the squalor of their daily martyrdom. A certain philosopher said that he could not endure so sombre an existence because his nerves and sinews were frail and the pain would have mastered him; but he gladly owned that the enthusiasts had conquered his admiration and taken it for their permanent possession. The cool keen eye of the scoffer divined the strength of sorrow, and he admired the men whom he durst not imitate.

There are others who pa.s.s through life enwrapped by the veil of a n.o.ble sorrow; and, when I see them, I am minded to wonder whether any one was ever the worse for encountering the touch of the chilly Mistress whom most children of earth dread. When I think the matter over I become convinced that no one who has once felt a n.o.ble and gentle sorrow can ever become wholly bad; and I fancy that even the bad, when once a real sorrow has pierced them, have a chance of becoming good. So in strange ways the things that seem hard to bear steadily tend to make the world better. When the bell tolls and the brown earth gapes and the form of the loved one is pa.s.sed from sight for ever, it is bitter--ah, how bitter! But the chastening touch of Time takes away the bitterness, and there is left only an intense gentleness which seeks to soothe those who suffer; and the mother whose babe seemed to take her very heart away when it went into the Darkness can pity the other bereaved ones; so that her soul is exalted through its grief. The poet is thought by some to have uttered a mere aimless whim in words when he said--

"To Sorrow I bade good-morrow, And thought to leave her far away behind; But cheerly, cheerly, She loves me dearly-- She is so constant to me and so kind.

I would deceive her, And so leave her; But, ah, she is so constant and so kind!"

It sounds like a whim; but it is more than that to those who have been in the depths of grief; for they know that out of their affliction grew either a solemn scorn of worldly ills or a keen wish to be helpful to others.

I have no desire to utter a paradox when I say that all the world holds of best has sprung from sorrow. Shakspere smiles and is still. I love the smiles of his wiser years; but they would never have been so calmly content, so cheering with all their inscrutable depth, had not the man been weighed down with some dark sorrow before his soul was rescued and purified. I do not care for him when he is grinning and merry. He could play the buffoon when he willed--and a very unpleasant buffoon he was in his day; but Sorrow claimed him, and he came forth purified to speak to us by Prospero's lips. He had his struggle to compa.s.s resignation, he even seems to have felt himself degraded, and there is almost a weak complaint in that terrible sonnet, "No longer mourn for me when I am dead;" but his heart-strings held; he kept his dignity at the last, and he gave us the splendours of "The Tempest." I have no manner of superst.i.tion about the great poet--indeed I feel sure that at one time of his life he was what we call a bad man, his self-reproaches hinting all too plainly at forms of wickedness, moral wickedness, which pa.s.s far beyond the ordinary vice which society condemns--but I am sure that he became as good as he was serene; and I like to trace the phases of his sorrow up to the time of his triumph.

Of late it has been the fashion to talk about Byron's theatrical sorrow. One much-advertised critic went so far as to speak of "Byron's vulgar selfishness." It might have been supposed that incontestable evidence had come before him; but a careful perusal of the doc.u.ments will prove that, though Byron was as selfish as most other men during his mad misguided youth, yet, after sorrow had blanched his n.o.ble head, he cast off all that was vile in him and emerged from the fire-discipline as the most helpful and utterly unselfish of men. His last calm gentle letter to the woman who drove him out of England is simply perfect in its dignified humility; and the poorest creature that ever snarled may see from that letter that grief had turned the wayward fierce poet into a gentle and forbearing man who had suffered so much that he could not find it in his heart to inflict suffering on his worst enemy. I call the Byron of the Abbey a bad man; the Byron whose home became the home of pure charity--charity done in secret--was a good man.

Sorrow may appear repulsive and men bid her "Avaunt!" Yet out of sorrow all that is n.o.blest and highest in poesy and art has arisen; and all that is n.o.blest in life has been achieved by the sorrow-stricken. Joy has given us much; and those who have once known what real earthly joy means should be content to pa.s.s unrepining to the Shades; but Sorrow's gifts are priceless, and no man can appraise their worth. Even poor Carlyle's sorrow, which was oftentimes aught but n.o.ble, if all tales be true, was sufficient to endow us with the most splendid of modern books. It is strange to see how that crabbed man with the pa.s.sionately-loving heart keeps harping on the beneficence of sorrow. Once he spoke of "Sorrow's fire-whips"; but usually his strain is far, far different. He cleaves to the n.o.ble and sorrowful figures that crowd his sombre galleries; and I do not know that he ever gives more than a light and careless word of praise to any but his melancholy heroes. Cromwell, Abbot Sampson, the bold Ziethen, Danton, Mirabeau, Mahomet, Burns, "the great, melancholy Johnson," and even Napoleon and Luther--all are sorrowful, all are beautiful. Peace to them, and peace to the strong soul that made them all live again for the world!

XXIV.

DEATH.

The air of mystery which most of us a.s.sume when we speak about the great change that marks the bound of our mortal progress has engendered a kind of paralysing terror which makes ordinary people shudder at the notion of bodily extinction. We are glad enough to enjoy the beautiful things of life, we welcome the rapture of love, the delight of the sun, the promise of spring, the glory of strength; and yet forsooth we must needs tremble at the grand beneficent close which rounds off our earthly strivings and completes one stage in our everlasting progress. Why should we not speak as frankly of Death as we do of love and life? If men would only be content to let their minds play freely around all the facts that concern our entrance, our progress, our exit, then existence would be relieved from the presence of terror. The Greeks were more rational than we are; they took the joys of life with serenity and gladness, and they accepted the mighty transformation with the same serenity. On their memorial-stones there is no note of mourning. A young man calmly bids adieu to his friends and prepares to pa.s.s with dignity from their presence; a gallant horseman exults in the knowledge that he once rejoiced in life--"Great joy had I on earth, and now I that came from the earth return to the earth." Such are the carvings and inscriptions that show the wise, brave spirit of the ancients. But we, with our civilisation, behave somewhat like those Indian tribes who keep one mysterious word in their minds, and try to avoid mentioning it throughout their lives.

Even in familiar conversation it is amusing to hear the desperate attempts made to paraphrase the word which should come naturally to the lips of all steadfast mortals. "If anything should happen to me,"

says the timid citizen, when he means, "If I should die"; and it would be possible to collect a score more of roundabout phrases with which men try to cheat themselves. It is right that we should be in love with life, for that is the supreme gift; but it is wrong to think with abhorrence of the close of life, for the same Being who gave us the thrilling rapture of consciousness bestows the boon of rest upon the temple of the soul. "He giveth His beloved sleep," and therein He proves His mighty tenderness.

Strange it is to see how inevitably men and women are drawn to think and speak of the great Terror when they are forced to muse in solitude. We flirt with melancholy; we try all kinds of dismal coquetries to avoid dwelling on our inexorable and beneficent doom; yet, if we look over the written thoughts of men, we find that more has been said about Death than even about love. The stone-cold comforter attracts the poets, and most of them, like Keats, are half in love with easeful death. The word that causes a shudder when it is spoken in a drawing-room gives a sombre and satisfying pleasure when we dwell upon it in our hours of solitude. Sometimes the poets are palpably guilty of hypocrisy, for they pretend to crave for the pa.s.sage into the shades. That is unreal and unhealthy; the wise man neither longs for death nor dreads it, and the fool who begs for extinction before the Omnipotent has willed that it should come is a mere silly blasphemer. But, though the men who put the thoughts of humanity into musical words are sometimes insincere, they are more often grave and consoling. I know of two supreme expressions of dread, and one of these was written by the wisest and calmest man that ever dwelt beneath the sun. Marvellous it is to think that our most sane and contented poet should have condensed all the terror of our race into one long and awful sentence. Perhaps Shakspere was stricken with momentary pity for the cowardice of his fellows, and, out of pure compa.s.sion, gave their agony a voice. That may be; at any rate, the fragment of "Measure for Measure" in which the cry of loathing and fear is uttered stands as the most striking and unforgettable saying that ever was conceived in the brain of man. Everybody knows the lines, yet we may once more touch our souls with solemnity by quoting them:

"Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod, and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice; To be imprisoned in the viewless winds And blown with restless violence round about The pendent world; or to be worse than worst Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts Imagine howling!--'tis too horrible!

The weariest and most loathed worldly life That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment Can lay on nature is a paradise To what we fear of death."

There is no more to be said in that particular line of reflection; the speech is flawless in its gruesome power, and every piercing word seems to leap from a shuddering soul. The other utterance which is fit to be matched with Shakspere's was written by Charles Lamb.

"Whatsoever thwarts or puts me out of my way brings death into my mind. All partial evils, like humours, run into that capital plague-sore. I have heard some profess an indifference to life. Such hail the end of their existence as a port of refuge, and speak of the grave as of some soft arms in which they may slumber as on a pillow.

Some have wooed death--but 'Out upon thee,' I say, 'thou foul, ugly phantom! I detest, abhor, execrate thee, as in no instance to be excused or tolerated, but shunned as a universal viper, to be branded, proscribed, and spoken evil of! In no way can I be brought to digest thee, thou thin, melancholy _Privation_. Those antidotes prescribed against the fear of thee are altogether frigid and insulting, like thyself.'"

Poor Charles's wild humour flickers over this page like lambent flame; yet he was serious at heart without a doubt, and his whirling words rouse an echo in many a breast to this day. But both Shakspere and Lamb had their higher moments. Turn to "Cymbeline," and observe the glorious triumph of the dirge which rings like the magnificent exultation of Beethoven's Funeral March--

"Fear no more the heat o' the sun, Nor the furious winter's rages; Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages; Golden lads and girls all must, As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

Fear no more the frown o' the great-- Thou art past the tyrant's stroke; Care no more to clothe and eat-- To thee the reed is as the oak; The sceptre, learning, physic, must All follow this, and come to dust."

Here in rhythmic form we have the thought of the mighty apostle--"O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?" Shakspere was too intensely human to be absolved from mortal weakness; but, in the main, he took the one view which I should be glad to see cherished by all. His words sometimes make us pause, as we pause when the violet flashes of summer lightning fleet across the lowering dome of the sky; but, in the end, he always has his words of cheer, and we gather heart from reading the strongest and most perfect writer the earth has known. Turn where we will, we find that all of our race--emperor, warrior, poet, clown, fair lady, innocent child--are given to dwelling on the same thought. It is our business to seek out those who have spoken with resignation and dauntlessness, and to leave aside all those who have only affectations of bravery or affectations of horror to give us. Here is a beautiful word:--

"The ways of Death are soothing and serene, And all the words of Death are grave and sweet; Approaching ever, soft of hands and feet, She beckons us, and strife and song have been.

A summer night, descending cool and green And dark on daytime's dust and stress and heat, The ways of Death are soothing and serene, And all the words of Death are grave and sweet.

O glad and sorrowful, with triumphant mien And hopeful fancies look upon and greet This last of all your lovers, and to meet Her kiss mysterious all your spirit lean!

The ways of Death are soothing and serene!"

Even Shakspere hardly bettered that!

I should not like to see men begin to encourage the recklessness of the desperado, nor should I like to see women affect the brazen abandonment of the Amazon. I only care to see our fellow-creatures rise above pettiness, so that they may accept all G.o.d's ordinances with unvarying grat.i.tude. Is it not pitiful to see a grown man trembling and waving his hand with angry disgust when the holy course of Nature is spoken of with gravity and composed resolution? I have seen a stout, strong man who had ama.s.sed enormous wealth fly into pettish rage like a spoiled child when a friend spoke to him about the final disposal of his riches. Like a silly girl, this powerful millionaire went into tremors when the inevitable was named in his ear, for he had imbibed all the cowardly conventions that tend to poison our existence. He died a hundred deaths in his time, and much of his life was pa.s.sed in such misery as only cultivated poltroonery can breed. Wicked wags knew that they could frighten him at any moment; they would greet him cordially, and then suddenly a.s.sume an air of deep concern. The poor plutocrat's face changed instantly, and he would ask, "What is the matter?" The joker then made answer, "You are a little flushed. You should rest." This was enough. The truant imagination of the unhappy b.u.t.t went far afield in search of terrors; neither food, nor wine, nor the pleasures of the theatre could tempt him, and he remained in a state of limpness until the natural buoyancy of his spirits a.s.serted itself. What a life! How much better would it have been for this rich man had he trained himself to preserve General Gordon's composure, even if he had bought that composure at the price of his whole colossal fortune! Riches were useless to him, the sun failed to cheer him, and his end was in truth a release from one incessant torture.

Turn from this hare-hearted citizen, and think of our hero, the pride of England, the flower of the human race--Charles Gordon. With his exquisite simplicity, Gordon confesses in one of his letters that he used to feel frightened when he went under fire, for the superst.i.tious dread of death had been grafted on his mind when he was young. But he learned the fear of G.o.d and lost all other fear; he accustomed himself to the idea of parting with the world and its hopes and labours, and in all the long series of letters which he sent home from the Soudan during his period of rule we find him constantly speaking quietly, joyously about the event which carries horror to the hearts of weak men--"My Master will lay me aside and use some other instrument when I have fulfilled His purpose. I have no fear of death, for I know I shall exchange much weariness for perfect peace." So spoke the hero, the just and faithful Knight of G.o.d. He was simple, with the simplicity of a flawless diamond; he was reverent, he was faithful even to the end, and he was incredibly dauntless. Why? Because he had faced the last great problem with all the force of his n.o.ble manhood, and the thought of his translation to another world woke in his gallant soul images of beauty and holiness. Why should the meanest and most unlearned of us all not strive to follow in the footsteps of the hero? Millions on millions have pa.s.sed away, and they now know all things; the cessation of human life is as common and natural as the drawing of our breath; why then should we invest a natural, blessed, beautiful event with murky lines of wrath and dread? The pitiful wretch who flaunts his braggart defiance before the eyes of men and shrieks his feeble contempt of the inevitable is worthy only of our quiet scorn; but the grateful soul that bows humbly to the stroke of fate and accepts death as thankfully as life is in all ways worthy of admiration and vivid respect. We are p.r.o.ne to talk of our "rights,"

and some of us have a very exalted idea of the range which those precious "rights" should cover. One of our poets goes so far as to inquire in an amiable way, "What have we done to thee, O Death?" He insinuates that Death is very unkind to ply the abhorred shears over such nice, harmless creatures as we are. Let us, for manhood's sake, have done with puerility; let us recognise that our "rights" have no existence, and that we must perforce accept the burdens of life, labour, and death that are laid upon us. We can do no good by nourishing fears, by encouraging silly conventionalities, by shirking the bald facts of life; and we should gently, joyfully, trustfully look our fate in the face and fear nothing. Life will never be the joyous pilgrimage that it ought to be until men have learned to crush their pride, their doubts, their terrors, and have also learned to regard the beautiful sleep as a holy and fitting reward only to be rightly enjoyed by those who live purely, righteously, hopefully in the sight of G.o.d and man.

XXV.

JOURNALISM.

When the mystic midnight pa.s.ses, the bustle of Fleet Street slackens; but on each side of the thoroughfare hundreds of workers with hand and brain are toiling with eager intensity. In tall buildings here and there the lights glitter on every floor, and throw their long shafts through the gloom; not much activity is plainly visible, and yet somehow the merest novice feels that there is a throb in the air, and that some mysterious forces are working around him. Hurrying messengers dash by, stray cabs rush along with a low rumble and sharp clash of hoofs. But it is not in the street that the minds and bodies of men are obviously in action; go inside one of the mighty palatial offices, and you find yourself in the midst of such a hive of marvellous industry as the world has never seen before. On one journal as many as four hundred and fifty or five hundred men are all labouring for dear life; every one is at high pressure, from the silent leader-writer to the fussy swift-footed messenger. In that one building is concentrated a great estate, which yields a revenue that exceeds that of some princ.i.p.alities; it is a large nerve-centre, and myriads of fibres connect it with every part of the globe; or, say, it is like some miraculous eye, which sees in all directions and is indifferent to distance. Go into one quiet, soft-carpeted room, and certain small glittering machines flash in the bright light. "Click, click--click, click!"--long strips of tape are softly unwound and fall in slack twisted piles. One of those machines is printing off a long letter from Berlin, another is registering news from Vienna, and by a third news from Paris comes as easily and rapidly as from Sh.o.r.editch; subdued men take the tapes, expand and make fluent the curt, halting phrases of the foreign correspondents, and pa.s.s the messages swiftly away to the printers. From America, Australia, India, China, the items of news pour in, and are scrutinised by severe sub-editors; and those experts calculate to a fraction of an inch what s.p.a.ce can be judiciously spared for each item. If Parliament is sitting, the relays of messengers arrive with batches of ma.n.u.script; and, when an important debate is proceeding, the steady influx of hundreds of scribbled sheets is enormous. A four hours' speech from such an orator as Mr. Gladstone or Mr. Chamberlain contains, say, thirty thousand words. Imagine the area of paper covered by the reporters! But such a speech would rarely come in late at night, and the men can usually handle an important oration by an eminent speaker in a way that is leisurely by comparison. The slips are distributed with lightning rapidity; each man puts his little batch into type, the fragments are placed in their queer frame, and presently the readers are poring over the long, damp, and odorous proof-sheets. There is no very great hurry in the early part of the evening; but, as the small hours wear away, the strain is feverish in its poignancy. There is no noise, no confusion; each man knows his office, and fulfils it deftly. But such great issues are involved, that the nervousness of managers, printers, sub-editors--every one--may easily be understood. Suppose that a very important division is to be taken in Parliament; the minutes roll by, and the news is still delayed. Some kind of comment must be made on the result of the debate, and an able, swift writer scrawls off his column of phrases with furious speed. Then that article must be put into type; a model of the type must be taken on a sheet of papier-mache, the melted metal must be poured into the paper mould, the resulting curved block must be clamped on to a cylinder of the waiting machine, and all this must be done with strict regard to the value of seconds. A delay of half a minute might prevent the manager from sending his piles of journals away by the early train, and that would be a calamity too fearful to be dreamed of. In one great newspaper-office ten machines are all set going together, and an eleventh is kept ready in case of accident. The ten whizzing cylinders print off the papers, and an impression of a quarter of a million is soon thrown out, folded, and piled ready for distribution. But imagine what a loss of one minute means! Truly the agitation of the officials at an awkward pinch is singularly excusable, and many a hard word is levelled at pertinacious talkers who insist on thrusting themselves upon the House at a time when the country is waiting with wild eagerness for momentous tidings. The long line of carts waits in the street, the speedy ponies rattle off, and soon the immense building is all but still. Comfortable people who have their journal punctually handed in at a convenient hour in the morning are apt to think lightly of the raging effort, the inconceivably complicated organisation, the colossal expense needed to produce that sheet which is flung away at the close of each day. A blunder of the most trivial kind might throw everything out of gear; but stern discipline and ubiquitous precaution render the blunder almost an impossibility. Sometimes you may observe in a paper like the _Times_ one column which bristles with typographical errors. All the slips are cl.u.s.tered in one place, and the reason is that the few minutes necessary for proper revision could not be spared. Good workmen are set on at the last moment, and an attempt is made to set up the final sc.r.a.ps of matter with as few errors as possible; but little mistakes will creep in, and people who do not know the startling exigencies of the printer's trade are apt to express scornful wonder. Very comic have been the errors made during the recent furious and prolonged debates, for the frantic conflicts in the House were extended far into the small hours. One excited orator, in closing a debate, dropped into poetry, and remarked that a certain catastrophe came "like a bolt from the blue"; a daily journal of vast circulation described the event as coming "like a bolt from the flue"--which was a very sad instance of bathos. The amazing thing is that such blunders should be so rare as to be memorable.

What a strange population who toil thus at night for our pleasure and instruction, and who reverse the order of ordinary people's lives!

They are worth knowing, these swift, dexterous, laborious people.

First of all comes the great personage--the editor. In old days simple persons imagined the conductor of the _Times_ perched upon a majestic throne, whence he hurled his bolts in the most light-hearted manner.

We know better now; yet it must be owned that the editor of a great journal is a very important personage indeed. The true editor is born to his function; if he has not the gift, no amount of drilling will ever make him efficient. Many of the outside public still picture the editor as wielding his pen valiantly, and stabbing enemies or heartening friends with his own hands. As a matter of fact, the editor's function is not to write; the best of the profession never touch a pen, excepting to write a brief note of instruction or to send a private letter. The editor is the brain of the journal; and, in the case of a daily paper, his business is not so much to instruct the public as to find out what the public want to say, and say it for them in the clearest and most forcible way possible. Imagine a general commanding amid the din of a great battle. He must remember the number of his forces, the exact disposition of every battalion, the peculiar capabilities of his princ.i.p.al subordinates, and he must also note every yard of the ground. He hears that a battalion has been repulsed with heavy slaughter at a point one mile away, and the officer in command cannot repeat his a.s.sault without reinforcements. He must instantly decide as to whether the foiled battalion is merely to hold its ground or to advance once more. Orderlies reach him from all points of the compa.s.s; he must note where the enemy's fire slackens or gains power; he must be ready to use the field-telegraph with unhesitating decision, for a minute's hesitation may lose the battle and ruin his force. In short, the general plays a vast game which makes the complications of chess seem simple. The editor, in his peaceful way, has to perform daily a mental feat almost equal in complexity to that of the warrior. Public opinion usually has strong general tendencies; but there are hundreds of cross-currents, and the editor must allow for all. Suppose that a public agitation is begun, and that a great national movement seems to be in progress; then the editor must be able to tell instinctively how far the movement is likely to be strong and lasting. If he errs seriously, and regards an agitation as trivial which is really momentous, then his journal receives a blow which may cripple its influence during months. One great paper was ruined some twenty years ago by a blunder, and about one hundred thousand pounds were deliberately thrown away through obstinate folly. The perfect editor, like the great general, seizes every clue that can guide him, and makes his final movement with alert decision. No wonder that the work of editing wears men out early. The great _Times_ editor, Mr. Delane, went about much in society; he always appeared to be calm, untroubled, inscrutable, though the factions were warring fiercely and bitterness had reached its height.

He scarcely ever missed his mark; and, when he strolled into his office late in the evening, his plan was ready for the morrow's battle. At five the next morning his well-known figure, wrapped in the queer long coat, was to be seen coming from the square; he might have destroyed a government, or altered a war policy, or ruined a statesman--all was one to him; and he went away ready to lay his plans for the next day's conflict. Delane's power at one time was almost incalculable, and he gained it by unerringly finding out exactly what England wanted. England might be wrong or right--that was none of Delane's business; he cared only to discover what his country wished for from day to day. An amazing function is that of an editor.

Then we have the leader-writer. The British public have decided that their newspaper shall furnish them daily with three or four little addresses on various topics of current interest; and these grave or gay sermons are composed by practised hands who must be ready to write on almost any subject under the sun at a minute's notice. In a certain cla.s.s of old-fashioned literature the newspaper-writer is represented as a careless, dissipated Bohemian, who lived with rackety inconsequence. That tribe of writers has long vanished from the face of the earth. The last of the sort that I remember was a miserable old man who haunted the British Museum. No one knew where he lived; but his work, such as it was, usually went in with punctuality, and he drank the proceeds. He died in a stall of a low public-house, and was buried by the parish. No one but his editor and one or two cronies knew his real name, and he appeared to be utterly friendless. But the modern leader-writer must beware of strong liquors. Usually he is a keen, reposeful man who has his brain cool at all hours. The immense drinking-bouts of old times could never be indulged in now; and indeed, if a journalist once begins to take stimulants as stimulants, his end is not far off. Let us mention the kind of feats which must be performed. A powerful minister makes a speech after eleven o'clock at night; the leader-writer receives proof-sheets; he must grasp the whole scope of the speech in a flash, and then proceed with the mere mechanical work of writing. Twelve hundred words will take about an hour and twenty minutes to set down, and then the MS. must be rushed piece by piece to the composing-room. Again, supposing that news of some great disaster arrives late. An article must be swiftly done, and the writer must have a theory ready that will hold water. Work like this needs a quick wit, a copious vocabulary, and an absolutely steady hand. Moreover, the leader-writer must unhappily be invariably ready to write "nothings" so that they may look like "somethings." News is scarce, foreign nations show a culpable lack of desire to kill each other, no moving accident has occurred--and the paper must be filled.

Then the leader-writer must take some trivial subject and weave round it a web of graceful and amusing phrases. One brilliant scholar once wrote a most charming and learned article about pigs; and I have seen a column of grave nonsense spun out on the subject of an unhappy cat which fixed its head in a salmon-tin!

This hurried writing on trifling matters brings on a certain looseness of style and thought; but the public will have it, and the demand creates the supply of a flimsy, pleasant, literary article. The best leaders are now written by fine scholars. In travelling over the country I have been amused by simple people who imagined that the articles in a journal were produced by one secret and utterly mysterious being. These good folk are mightily surprised on finding that the admired leaders are done by a troop of men who are not exactly commonplace, but who are not much wiser or better than their fellows.