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
class 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.
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