so nicely
fitting, and so many ending with the page or column, have very little
notion of the cutting and carving which goes to the process. At the very
last moment arises the necessity of some trimming of this kind; and the
editor, who would gladly call the writer to counsel if he could, is obliged
to strike out ten or twelve lines. He must do his best, but it may chance
that the omission selected would take from the writer the power of owning
the article. A few years ago, an able opponent of mine wrote to a journal
some criticisms upon an article which he expressly attributed to me. I
replied as if I were the writer, which, in a sense, I was. But if any one
had required of me an unmodified 'Yes' or 'No' to the question whether I
wrote the article, I must, of two falsehoods, have chosen 'No': for certain
omissions, dictated by the necessities of space and time, would have
amounted, had my signature been affixed, to a silent surrender of points
which, in my own character, I must have strongly insisted on, unless I had
chosen to admit certain inferences against what I had previously published
in my own name. I may here add that the forms of journalism obliged me in
this case to remind my opponent that it could not be permitted to me, _in
that journal_, either to acknowledge or deny the authorship of the
articles. The cautions derived from the above remarks are particularly
wanted with reference to the editorial comments upon letters of complaint.
There is often no time to send these letters to the contributor, and even
when this can be done, an editor is--and very properly--never of so
editorial a mind as when he is revising the comments of a contributor upon
an assailant of the article. He is then in a better position as to
information, and a more {19} critical position as to responsibility. Of
course, an editor never meddles, except under notice, with the letter of a
correspondent, whether of a complainant, of a casual informant, or of a
contributor who sees reason to become a correspondent. Omissions must
sometimes be made when a grievance is too highly spiced. It did once happen
to me that a waggish editor made an insertion without notice in a letter
signed by me with some fiction, which insertion contained the name of a
friend of mine, with a satire which I did not believe, and should not have
written if I had. To my strong rebuke, he replied--'I know it was very
wrong; but human nature could not resist.' But this was