ks he can. He can turn you out a sentence, which,
after going about so far, refers to what it is talking about, cuts a
pigeon-wing like the boys on the ice, tells a little tale between two
dashes, and one inside of that between two parentheses ("finger-nails,"
the printers call them), again refers to what it is talking about, and
closes up with three unaccented syllables following a heavy sound.
Sometimes folks hire this gentleman. The proof-slip is thrown in wet,
greatly to his horror, and after drying it he finds they are waiting for
it outside, and some other proof-reader is compelled to take it. Then
he learns he must read it wet, as it is. Pretty soon the foreman of the
printers brings in a proof-slip which is set in three sizes of type
where the gentleman discovered but one size. Then the foreman of the
proof-room has a discouraging way of taking the gentleman's proof and
marking from eight to ten glaring typographical errors which the
gentleman has overlooked, and eight or ten typographical absurdities,
which he has approved, and, horrors upon horrors! eight or ten errors of
"style." Now, for the first time, the gentleman has learned that every
time the word "President" appears in the newspaper it is either
capitalized or uncapitalized, while he had naturally supposed that it
took its chances, the way a picnic does!

THUS THE GENTLEMAN GETS AN IDEA

of his utter incompetency to fill the place of a trained man. And he
never gets half so complete a view of his uselessness as do those around
him. Such proof-readers rarely work two nights. They are corporals in
captains' places. Or, perhaps, they are captains of artillery in the
infantry service. What do folks do when the best proof-reader is
missing? They go out into the type-setting room and take the brightest
printer they can find. He cannot tell French from Latin, but he can see
a fair share of the errors in a proof-slip, and will not let the
telegraphic abbreviation for government go into the paper as "goat," nor
that for Republican as "roofer," as I have seen collegiates do.

HE IS ALREADY A LIEUTENANT.

Give him a little practice and he is a captain. With energy and ambition
failure never comes if you only know the difficulties. "Fools rush in
where angels fear to tread" is as good in business as in poetry. In the
great cities there are long streets lined with retail store-rooms of
every quality of location. They rent at from twenty-five to a hundred
d