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.
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