from their settlements before they ought, but we think there are quite as
many who do not go soon enough. A husband might just as well try to keep
his wife by choking her to death with a marriage ring as a minister to try
to keep a church's love by ecclesiastical violence. Study the best time to
quit.

CHAPTER XXXV.

AN EDITOR'S CHIP-BASKET.

On our way out the newspaper rooms we stumbled over the basket in which is
deposited the literary material we cannot use. The basket upset and
surprised us with its contents. On the top were some things that looked
like fifteen or twenty poems. People outside have no idea of the amount of
rhyme that comes to a printing office. The fact is that at some period in
every one's life he writes "poetry." His existence depends upon it. We
wrote ten or fifteen verses ourselves once. Had we not written them just
then and there, we might not be here. They were in long metre, and "Old
Hundred" would have fitted them grandly.

Many people are seized with the poetic spasm when they are sick, and their
lines are apt to begin with.

"O mortality! how frail art thou!"

Others on Sabbath afternoons write Sabbath-school hymns, adding to the
batch of infinite nonsense that the children are compelled to swallow. For
others a beautiful curl is a corkscrew pulling out canto after canto.
Nine-tenths of the rhyme that comes to a printing office cannot be used.
You hear a rough tear of paper, and you look around to see the managing
editor adding to the responsibilities of his chip-basket. What a way that
is to treat incipient Tennysons and Longfellows!

Next to the poetic effusions tumble out treatises on "constitutional law"
heavy enough to break the basket. We have noticed that after a man has got
so dull he can get no one willing to hear him he takes to profound
exposition. Out from the same chip-basket rolls a great pile of
announcements that people want put among the editorials, so as to save the
expense of the advertising column. They tell us the article they wish
recommended will have a highly beneficial effect upon the Church and world.
It is a religious churn, or a moral horse-rake, or a consecrated fly trap.
They almost get us crying over their new kind of grindstone, and we put the
letter down on the table while we get out our pocket-handkerchief, when our
assistant takes hold the document and gives it a ruthless rip, and pitches
it into the chip-basket.

Next in the pile of